


a drop in the ocean

by jilliancares



Series: lance's fairytale [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Allura and Hunk are also mermaids, Drowning, First Kiss, Hurt/Comfort, Keith is a human, M/M, Mermaids, Shiro and Pidge are humans, almost, broganes, eventually, mermaid lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-14
Updated: 2018-02-18
Packaged: 2019-03-04 19:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 54,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13371432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jilliancares/pseuds/jilliancares
Summary: Lance has always been maybe a little too adventurous for his own good. This usually leads to an anxious Hunk, an angry Princess Allura, and an in-trouble-once-again Lance. This time, however, it leads to him meeting a pair of humans — one of which, he can't get out of his head.Lance only hopes he can keep meeting up with Keith without getting caught.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey guys!!! i'm turning this into a chaptered fic instead of a long oneshot in the hopes that it'll make me churn it out faster. idk exactly how long/how many chapters this is gonna be yet, but if i ever take longer than a week to update just Yell At Me. 
> 
> i hope you enjoy!!
> 
> (p.s. i have no idea how to sail a boat. pls just accept my boat lore as Fact)

Lance had always been a fan of fairy tales.

There was just something about them that had always appealed to him. The stories were always fascinating, full of treasure, battles, and forbidden love. Tales of princesses and kings, of evil scuba divers and hungry sharks. Stories of a single mermaid searching the entire ocean for a lost artifact; stories of hope and forgiveness; stories of betrayal.

When Lance was little, he’d always been the first to eagerly gather whenever a story-teller was getting ready to tell a story, even if it was one he’d heard a thousand times before. They always changed, just a little bit, from story-teller to story-teller. Lance could proudly proclaim that he’d heard more versions than anyone else in his clan.

“That’s so romantic,” a young-Lance had once sighed, floating belly-up with his arms flung out to the side. The surface of the ocean, far, far above him, had looked beautiful and tantalizing that day.

“And just what is so romantic about that story?” his older sister Maria had snapped, her arms crossed. Lance, even then, had been someone that everyone claimed loved the sound of his own voice. It was said that he would talk about just about anything, whether he knew the subject matter or not.

It was true that Lance loved talking, though not because he so adored the sound of his own voice. It was just that he had a lot to say, so much constantly swimming through his brain — it only made sense that he had to get it out somehow.

“Forbidden love!” Lance had exclaimed, flipping back over to emphasize this point to his sister (and the other guppies gathered). “Heartbreak! Imagine falling in love with someone who couldn’t even come to your own home…”

“There’s a reason it’s a fairy tale, Lance,” the story-teller had reprimanded gently. “It’s more of a cautionary tale than anything else. They both end up unhappy, remember?”

“That’s just because you couldn’t think of a better ending,” Lance had claimed, pouting. “Why couldn’t the human grow gills? Then it could’ve been a happy ending.”

“Humans can’t grow gills, Lance. And they’re dangerous, too.”

That, Lance knew, was true. All merfolk were wary of humans — it was in their very nature. Despite the beautiful and tragic fairytales about falling in love with them, it was well known and widely accepted that humans were more trouble than they were worth, something to be avoided at all costs.

The humans knew about the merfolk, of course. Or at least, some of them did.

Years ago, before Lance’s time, they’d been discovered by humans. It’d been chaos — an uproar of mermish armies gathering, of their people panicking, of humans invading their territory with all kinds of cold, terrifying equipment. There’d been kidnappings, merfolk dragged from the water in thick nets and stolen away from their homes.

Everything had come to a peaceful end eventually. Their leader, King Alfor, had settled it with the humans. He’d ventured to the surface again and again, something that had frightened their people, knowing that despite his royal guard, there was a chance that he, too, could get kidnapped.

But Alfor was persuasive, and a diplomat, and he wasn’t king for nothing. Plus, he’d known how to speak the humans’ tongue, something that had finally caught their attention. He’d convinced the humans to returned their stolen brethren — something that the humans, surprisingly, had been willing to do once they’d realized the merfolk were as mentally advanced as they themselves were. (Lance was convinced they were less advanced than the merfolk, seeing as they’d thought it wise to kidnap entire people in an attempt to study them.)

Now, only the human government knew of their existence. Every years, humans in strange garbs and detachable fins entered their home, wearing giant masks and carrying strange tanks on their backs. When these humans came, Lance and everyone else were told to just proceed throughout their day normally.

“They won’t harm us,” was what every mother told their kids, almost all of whom became anxious and frightened at the arrival of the strange people trespassing in their homes. “They’re just curious. They’re learning.”

Apparently, part of Alfor’s bargain had been allowing the government’s humans to continue to “study” them, though in secret from the rest of their population. Lance guessed it made sense. He had no doubts that the humans would win if it ever came to a fight between their species.

After all, the humans could survive underwater with their weird masks and flippers, but a mermaid above land was immobile, beached. That was if the humans could catch them, of course. Lance knew that if it ever came to that, his people would escape to the darkest depths of the ocean if they had to — they’d go someplace that even the humans with all their metal equipment, the ones that glowed and the ones with blinking lights, could never find.

It was because of this fear of humans that Lance had never let his love of fairytales blind him. No human could be as romantic or kind-hearted as the one in that fairytale anyway, he was sure. Plus, Lance had always been a lover. He would one day mate with another mermaid — someone perfect for him.

He was convinced that this someone was Princess Allura, daughter of now passed King Alfor and the most beautiful mermaid Lance had ever seen. Sadly, Allura was not similarly convinced of their love, and so he pined and suffered.

“It’s just not meant to be,” Hunk comforted, patting his back as Lance floated aimlessly through the water, watching Allura swim past some ways ahead from them.

“You think she’s out of my league,” Lance accused, and Hunk groaned. He was probably sick of these kinds of conversations, but Lance couldn’t help it. He was ready to find love and move on to life’s Next Great Adventure.

“I’m just saying, maybe you would’ve found someone else by now if you weren’t so obsessed with her,” said Hunk, and Lance sighed wistfully.

“My life would be a whole lot easier if you were gay, Hunk.”

“If I were gay, I wouldn’t date you.”

“Rude!”

“I just wouldn’t want to chance ruining our friendship!”

Lance continued bickering with Hunk as he swam towards the drop off. Their colony was settled on a long, flat coral reef, far enough below the surface to be unaffected by storms and boats, but close enough to enjoy the warmth from the sun. The drop off was where this shelf ended, the ocean floor tumbling away into darkness and the water growing colder, filled with creatures of the dark.

Technically, they weren’t allowed to leave the shelf unless they were of age. But technically, they weren’t supposed to do a lot of the things that Lance did.

“Aw, Lance,” Hunk moaned, as he finally stopped fighting with Lance and actually paid attention to where they were. “I told you I was done with leaving the shelf.”

“And I told _you_  that that’s the most boringest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Boringest isn’t a word.”

“Sure it is,” Lance said idly, now scanning the sand below him for a certain something that might convince Hunk.

“I’m not going with you,” Hunk claimed, and Lance ignored him, sure he would change his mind.

“You’re the one who wanted me to find something to do,” Lance said, before letting out a triumphant noise as he came across the small object he’d hidden here the day before. “It’s either this or flirt with Allura.”

“Both of which are bad decisions.”

“You’re sure I can’t convince you to come?”

“Positive.”

“All right. Guess I’ll go look at this on my own, then.” Lance held up the object as he said this, fighting his grin at the expression on Hunk’s face. The object fit perfectly into the palm of Lance’s hand, and if anyone knew he had it, he’d be in big trouble.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Where do you think?” Lance scoffed.

The device was human-made. Allura had been the one to find it and she’d acted like it was the biggest deal in the world. She was obviously way more scared of humans than Lance was — possibly because she had an entire colony to look out for — and she’d immediately put out orders for similar devices to be turned in to her immediately, if found.

Though Hunk didn’t normally like to break rules, this was different. He was wearing that hungry, lip-biting, desperate expression he wore whenever he wanted to figure something out, to take it apart and learn and put it back together again.

See, he and Lance had been keeping their eyes out for these devices ever since Allura had put out that order. Originally, it’d been because Lance had wanted to find one so he could turn it into Allura and have her be all, _‘Oh Lance, you saved the day!’_  but over time his intentions had changed. Not that Lance was an eavesdropper, but he’d once eavesdropped on Allura and found out that the device was some kind of human communication device. Ever since, Lance and Hunk had been scouring the reefs looking for similar devices, powered by curiosity.

And yesterday, Lance had found one — just, not exactly in the reefs.

“You did not,” said Hunk. “Please tell me you didn’t.”

“Okay, I didn’t,” Lance said, grinning now. He held the device up in front of his face, examining every inch.

“Oh God, Lance! What if they realize it’s missing?”

“Relaaax,” said Lance. “No one’ll ever know. I made a replica before I stole this.”

“What I’m hearing is: you stole from the palace and somehow think you’re not going to end up getting in trouble for it.”

“Correct,” said Lance. “Now, do you wanna look at this out here in the open or in the deep, dark waters where no one’ll find us?”

And deep dark waters it was. Hunk liked to pretend he had this strong, moral backbone, but he was just as curious and nosy as Lance ever was. They swam straight off the shelf, hiding themselves away in a small underwater cave, where Lance finally unveiled the object once more. He let it float in the water between him and Hunk, the two of them automatically circling it curiously, trying to figure out how it worked.

“I want to take it apart,” said Hunk.

“Huuuunk!” Lance immediately whined. “We haven’t even figured out what it does yet! I want to have fun with it before you take it apart.”

“I’ll put it back together,” Hunk huffed, but he thankfully didn’t snatch it and run, so the chance for entertainment remained.

“Allura said it was a communication device,” Lance said, squinting at the thing. “But how? How can humans use this thing to communicate?”

“Maybe I could figure it out if you let me take it apart.”

“ _No_ , Hunk,” Lance insisted, before sighing heartily. “Maybe it’s broken. Didn’t we learn something about human technology in school? It runs on ekeltricity, or something.”

“Oh yeah! We just need to find some!”

“No, no — it comes with it. But water breaks it, I think.”

“Oh.”

“ _So_ , let’s take it to the surface! If we get it out of the water, maybe it’ll work!”

“Lance!” said Hunk. “You’re a genius!”

With that, they were swimming towards the surface — similarly off-limits. A lot of things around here were “off-limits” or “against the rules”, but Lance just liked to think of it as fun with a consequence. Meaning, if he got caught having fun… there’d be consequences.

Luckily, Allura was pretty lenient with him whenever he _was_  caught on a little off-limits adventure. This probably had to do with the fact that they were friends — or maybe Allura was secretly in love with him, which, yeah. That was probably it.

Lance understood that there was reason for things being off-limits, he knew that the rules were set in place to protect them, but he could be cautious on his own while ignoring these rules. Yes, the surface was dangerous because of humans, and _yes_ , the deep water was dangerous because of things that wanted to eat mermaids for breakfast, but Lance was pretty sure he could swat just about anything in the face hard enough and be home-free, so.

Finally, they reached the surface, coughing and gasping as they adjusted from breathing through their gills to breathing through their mouths. Lance shoved his hair out of his eyes, hastily scanning the horizon for any boats before swimming closer to Hunk, who had the device.

“Is it working?” Lance asked in English, and Hunk raised the device above the water, where they both examined it anew. It was easier to speak in a human tongue above the water, their own language not so cooperative without water and gills to ease their words.

“We don’t even know what it’s supposed to do,” Hunk said, starting to sound resigned. And when Hunk started to sound resigned it meant there were only moments left until he started taking things apart in an attempt to learn from them.

“Uh, _helloooo_? It’s supposed to _communicate_!”

“That’s just what Allura thinks, what if she’s wrong?”

Lance scoffed. “When is Allura ever wrong? If she thinks this is a communication device, then this is a —”

“ _Woah_.”

Lance and Hunk both froze, before slowly turning towards the device. It was doing something — projecting something. A weird, screen-thing was floating above the object, and in that screen things was a—

“OH MY GOD, GET RID OF IT!” Lance exclaimed, swatting the device out of Hunk’s hand with a shriek. It’d been a human! A human face! And it’d seen them!

“Allura’s gonna kill us,” Hunk fretted. “Allura’s gonna kill us, Allura’s gonna —”

“Allura’s _not_  going to kill us,” Lance insisted. “She’ll never know we took the device, okay?”

“Yes she will! She always finds out!”

“Okay, here’s what we’ll do,” Lance said, suddenly overcome with a sense of calm. “We’ll hide the device. No — we’ll feed it to a shark. Okay?”

“That’s a horrible idea.”

“Just help me get it!” Lance insisted, and then he dove back under the water because smacking away the very thing that he’d stolen and could subsequently get in trouble for stealing hadn’t been the brightest idea.

Luckily, the device wasn’t very hard to find. Despite being underwater once more, it was still projecting that human’s face — a human face which was eagerly looking around everywhere as the device continued to sink.

“Come on!” Lance insisted, and with Hunk following reluctantly behind him, he snatched the device out of the water and started swimming as fast as he could downward, past the shelf once more.

 _“Oh my God,”_  said the device-human, now projected directly in front of Lance’s face. Holding the device seemed to reorient it, somehow letting it know where Lance’s face was.

“That technology…” Hunk began, in his _I’m a huge nerd and appreciate boring nerdy things_  voice, and Lance told him to shut up.

“We need to find a shark,” Lance was saying. “Feed the shark the device and then don’t get eaten by the shark.”

“Lance! I’m scared of sharks!” Hunk said. “Can’t we just hide it somewhere?”

“Hidden isn’t good enough!” Lance practically screeched, because the human was just… _gaping_  at him.

 _“Mermaids,”_ said the human, sounding awed. “ _I knew it._   ** _I knew it_**!”

“Hunk,” Lance whispered. “It keeps trying to talk to me.”

“I don’t get why the device is still working,” Hunk huffed. “We’re underwater again! Shouldn’t it be messing with the electricity?”

“Ekeltricity, Hunk.”

“Whatever.”

 _“Actually, I made it to be waterproof, so,”_  said the human. _“And it doesn’t run on electricity. It uses the ocean’s currents to power itself.”_  This made Lance pause. Though he didn’t necessarily want to be talking to a human any longer — murderous species, and all — this left a gaping hole in how they’d gotten the device to work in the first place.

“Excuse me, _human_ ,” said Lance, holding up a finger and swimming closer to the human’s face, glaring. “Don’t think you can lie to us! We took the device out of the water so its ekeltripity could _work_.”

 _“Right,”_ said the human. _“Except it doesn’t run on electricity. It’s voice-activated. The key word was ‘hello’.”_

“That’s ingenious,” said Hunk.

“Don’t trust it!” said Lance. “Humans lie.”

 _“You’re the one who was trying to activate this device, weren’t you?”_  said the human. _“You knew it was a communication device, you knew it was made by a human — what did you expect?”_

“I didn’t think it would _work_!” Lance said, and Hunk glared at him.

“Are you serious? Then why were you dragging me all over the ocean?”

“I was _bored_ , Hunk. But hey! It did work! And now we have to feed it to a shark before the human materializes entirely and murders us.”

“Do you think that can happen?” Hunk fretted.

_“That can’t happen.”_

“How do we know you’re not lying?” Lance demanded, and he crossed his arms over his chest, leaning closer to the human.

 _“Because it’s impossible,”_  said the human. _“This is just a projection of me. You can put your hand right through my face, you know.”_  Lance wasn’t one to object against putting his hand through someone’s face, so he immediately swatted at the so-called projection, gasping as his hand went right through.

“Well… If it can’t hurt us…” Hunk started saying, and Lance glared at him.

“You better not be suggesting we keep it. After it tried to kill us!”

_“When did I try to kill you?”_

“At least let me take it apart,” Hunk said, and Lance groaned.

_“Woah, woah, woah. Do **not**  take this apart!”_

“Why not?” said Lance. “Hunk, I think you should take it apart.”

_"No, seriously — water will ruin the inner mechanisms. You’ll break it.”_

“And why wouldn’t we want to do that?”

_“Because I’m the first human you’ve ever seen?”_

“Wrong!” said Lance. He’d seen humans plenty of times before — all those government ones in those strange garments with those air tanks.

_“Because I’m the first human you’ve ever talked to?”_

Lance pursed his lips.

“She’s got a point,” said Hunk, making Lance purse his lips harder.

 _“Come on!”_ the human begged. _“I won’t do anything to hurt you, I promise. I’m just curious.”_

“That’s another point,” said Hunk.

“What are you talking about?”

“You _stole_  the device because you were curious, Lance.”

Lance scoffed. “I didn’t steal it! I’m… I’m _borrowing_  it. We don’t even know the human’s name!”

 _“It’s Pidge,”_  said the human Pidge. _“Don’t destroy my device and I’ll tell you anything about humans you want to know.”_

Oh God, that was exactly what she needed to say. Hunk’s eyes lit up, and Lance couldn’t even deny the curiosity gnawing in his own stomach. It was just — well, what did a human’s tail even look like?! They had two tails, first of all, but those government humans always covered them, so Lance had no idea what they looked like. Were they colorful, like a mermaid’s tail?

“Fine,” said Lance. “We won’t destroy your device. Now go away.”

_“Wait —”_

Lance tilted his head, thinking. The device had been voice-activated for it to start, so maybe for it to end… “Goodbye.”

The projection of the human flickered out of existence and Lance turned to Hunk, grinning. Then he started giggling. “That was so much fun!”

“What!? You were panicking the whole time!”

“Psh! No I wasn’t!” Lance protested. He curled his fist around the device, trying to think of a good spot to keep it hidden. “I was totally cool and suave. Do you think the human liked me?”

Hunk just sighed.

—

Lance hadn’t been planning to do any more major rule-breaking. Suffice it to say, he was feeling pretty all rule-broken out after the whole “Pidge” fiasco, as he was mentally calling it. Sure, curiosity was kind of eating him up inside, the knowledge that he had talked to a human and could talk to one again — one which had promised to answer any questions he may have about humans — but he was straight now. A no-rules-broken kind of guy.

Or at least, that’s what he was trying to tell himself. If he wasn’t gonna swim off the shelf to activate the device and talk to that Pidge person again then he’d just have to find some other way to entertain himself. And Hunk was busy — actually doing his school work or something — and there wasn’t really all that much to do in the cove when breaking rules wasn’t an option.

Soooo, yeah. Here Lance was. At the surface.

Okay, fine, _yes_ , it was _technically_  breaking a rule, but it wasn’t half as bad as stealing a communication device from the palace and then using it to communicate with a human, so. Yeah.

Despite the surface being a place they weren’t supposed to go, Lance had always been head-over-tail in love with it. There was something about being on the top of the ocean, something about the foreign feeling of a breeze, of the lapping waves, of breathing air through his mouth and closing his gills for once. Every time he ventured to the surface he couldn’t get it out of his head that maybe that was how it was supposed to _be_  — maybe mermaids were supposed to live closer to the surface, to not only dive into the ocean’s depths but also soar above the waves, feel the air on their skin and taste the sky in their mouths.

It was easy to not get caught, too. It wasn’t like Lance ever swam to the surface right above their little reef, and even if he did, there was a good chance the lengthy seaweed and giant rocks and towers of coral would block him from view. Still, he wasn’t one to take chances, and so he always swam a ways away from his home when he visited the surface.

Today, the skies weren’t the perfect blue he’d been hoping they’d be, only a cloud or two drifting lazily across it. Instead they were overcast, covered from horizon to horizon in dull, ugly gray clouds, blocking the nice warm sun from Lance’s skin. In the distance he could see the beach, dotted with the odd little structures humans made their homes in. Lance couldn’t help wondering why they needed living spaces so big or what they could possibly be keeping inside of them. Perhaps these were just the most wealthy of the humans, needing homes so large so as to store all their treasures.

Lance was distracted from his pondering by the feeling of something striking him in the nose, and then the cheek, and then the forehead, and then —

All around him, the surface of the ocean came alive, jumping up and down with the force of the raindrops. He’d never felt rain before. Come rain or storm he had always been hunkered away where it was safe, far enough beneath the surface to not be effected. Now, he tipped back his head and let the rain course over his face, so different from the water he was used to — _cold_.

With a sigh, Lance began to sink beneath the waves once more. He wasn’t a complete idiot, after all — he knew storms were dangerous, knew life was safer below the surface. The water had only just closed overtop his head when the device he’d been harboring _buzzed_. Unable to decide on the perfect hiding place (and also partially convinced that he needed to have it on him at all times, _just in case_ ), he’d threaded it onto a shell necklace, surrounded by so many shells of so many colors that it blended it pretty perfectly.

But now it was vibrating against his neck! Lance yanked his necklace over his head and held it out, staring at the communicator with a mix of shock and horror. Was it going to explode?!

Right then, Lance decided that he was going to get answers. “Hello?” he said, remembering that the device was voice activated.

“Oh, thank God!” said Pidge, her face popping up on that screen again.

“Your communicator was… doing something!” Lance exclaimed angrily. “Is it going to explode? I swear to all that is holy I will have Hunk break this thing in two —”

“I need your help,” Pidge interrupted, looking at him urgently.

“Your in no position to be asking favors!” Lance exclaimed. He’d talked to this person once! In no one’s book did that mean that he suddenly trusted her or even cared about her enough to do her a _favor_. For all he knew, she was on her way right now to kidnap him!

“Please, Lance,” she begged, eyes pleading, and Lance squinted at her.

“How do you know my name?”

“Your friend called you that the last time we talked, but that’s not the point. I really, really, need your help _please_.”

“How could I possibly help you with anything?” Lance said.

“It’s my friend, Keith,” said Pidge, and her eyes took on a whole new layer of worry. “He’s an idiot.”

“I can’t tutor him, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lance said immediately.

Ignoring him, Pidge continued. “He took his brother’s boat out an hour ago, something about ‘proving him wrong’? I don’t really know what he was talking about but it’s storming now and he hasn’t come back and also he’s never even sailed a boat before I don’t know what he was thinking —”

“Well I know what _you’re_  thinking,” Lance interrupted loudly, his hands now perched angrily on his hips. “You think you can lure me out to some boat to get kidnapped! Well I’m not going!”

“Lance! Please!”

Lance scoffed. “I’m not an idiot, okay? I’m not going to go find your little friend’s boat only to get netted and _killed_.”

Pidge pressed both her palms into her eyes and groaned. “All right, I need you to listen to me,” she said seriously, dragging her hands down her face and staring at Lance with utmost concentration. “I’m a scientist. I like to learn, and study, and create things. I’ve been trying to find proof that _you_  exist for _years_. But even more important to me than you is _Keith_  and he’s out in the middle of a storm in a boat he doesn’t know how to control and he could die.”

Lance didn’t want to believe her. He wanted to chuck the device away and go home and forget that any of this had happened. But looking at Pidge, at her wide, frantic eyes, he knew he couldn’t. He could already feel himself resigning to go find this stupid boat — one of the very things he’d always been taught to avoid — to make sure a human was okay (also something he should be avoiding).

“Fine,” Lance finally snapped. He huffed, sending a stream of bubbles zigzagging towards the surface. “But if for one second I think this is a ploy to kidnap me I’ll drag everyone aboard that boat to the bottom of the sea.”

“It’s just Keith on it,” Pidge hastily assured. “And he doesn’t know you exist, so maybe don’t drown him if he does something hasty?”

“No promises.”

Pidge rolled her eyes. “You know those cliffs? East of the beach?”

—

Lance had found the boat. It wasn’t hard, considering no one else was stupid enough to take a boat out in a storm.

“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Lance muttered to himself, his head just barely poking out of the water. Maybe it’d be more accurate to say, _I can’t believe I’m_ about _to do this_. Truth be told, he was more than a little bit wary of interacting with a human, and it was because of this wariness that he was still floating a safe distance away, protected by the churning waves.

The human — Keith, as Pidge had called him — was currently struggling with a rope, apparently trying to pull the sail back down. Lance knew absolutely nothing about boats, but he was pretty sure the fact that it was careening towards the craggy cliffs weren’t a good thing.

Suddenly, a big gust of wind hit the sail, yanking it out further than the halfway-closed state Keith had had it in. With wind howling and rain flying through the air, the boat doubled its speed towards the cliffs, looking ever sharper the closer the boat got to it.

The boat never reached the cliffs. A ginormous wave crashed into it, and that combined with the wind was enough to tip it over. Its passenger let out a yell and then he was gone, lost beneath the waves.

Despite all his hesitation, Lance’s heart began pounding with alarm at the sight of this, and before he knew it he was beneath the waves once more, struggling through the unpredictable current towards the boat.

He swam up from under it, eyes at once locking on the figure struggling there, Keith’s foot caught in a length of rope from the sail. He was yanking at it, making the knot even worse as he fought, bubbles escaping from his mouth.

Lance didn’t even have time to think. One moment he was watching this, panicked, and the next he was rushing forward, knocking Keith’s hand out of the way and assessing the rope. It wasn’t an impossible knot to untie, but it was just tangled enough that Lance realized Keith would probably run out of air by the time he’d untangled it, thanks to the pesky fact that humans for some reason didn’t have any gills.

Instead of untying the rope, Lance bared his sharp teeth and ripped through it with his mouth, yanking Keith free of them immediately after. He caught a glimpse of the boy’s face — eyes wide with surprise or maybe horror — before he was pulling him out from under the boat and back to the surface with the sloshing waves. They crested them with a gasp, Keith immediately coughing and shoving himself away from Lance, shaking wet hair out of his eyes.

“What the fuck,” he said flatly. He was panting — panicking, perhaps — and his eyes had gone wild.

“I know, I know,” Lance said dramatically. “Mermaids _exist_?”

“What? No,” Keith said, sounding distracted. He was looking at his capsized boat, struggling to stay afloat amongst the waves. “I know mermaids exist, it’s just — Shiro’s gonna kill me.”

Lance was dumbstruck. He’d expected more… _something_. Screaming, maybe. Or awe. Instead, Keith was kicking his — legs, weren’t they? — to stay above the water, nothing like the effortless flick of Lance’s fins, which was all he had to do to stay right where he was.

Right then, Lance decided he was annoyed. Somewhere in the back of his mind he’d been hoping for the human to be all awestruck and impressed at Lance’s existence, and instead he was barely even looking at him, still staring at that dumb, ugly _boat_. Suddenly, Keith struck out towards it, fighting horribly slowly through the waves and spitting out water that sloshed into his mouth.

Idly, Lance followed, having a much easier time of it than Keith was. Eventually Keith reached his destination, though, slapping against the boat and panting as he clung on.

“I need to flip this back over,” Keith said. He said this to Lance, his face set into a serious expression.

“Why are you looking at me?” Lance demanded. “I’m not allowed near boats.”

“You’re near one right now.”

“Right, but I _shouldn’t_  be,” said Lance. “Besides, there’s no way we can flip that thing. Especially with this storm.”

Keith glared at him. Who glared at a person they’d only just met?

“I need it to get home,” Keith said. “Or did you save me just so you could eat me?”

“We don’t eat people!” Lance exclaimed, offended. “And you’re stupid. Even if you did flip that boat, it’d probably just capsize again. You need to get to land.”

Keith opened his mouth to argue, but instead a giant wave crashed into him, and Keith’s body was flung forward, his head smacking into the boat’s hull. Just like that, Keith slumped, his eyes closed, and his legs stopped kicking under the water, his body sinking…

“Oh shit,” said Lance, just as Keith’s face slipped under the water. He swam forward and yanked him back up, looking around in a panic. He’d been here before — exploring with Hunk, though made less fun by Hunk whining the entire time about them going to get caught. If he was remembering correctly, somewhere around here was an underwater tunnel, one that eventually ended up in a little cave, also accessible by land.

Awkwardly, Lance shoved Keith’s limp body onto the upside down boat.

“Stay here,” he said. Keith said nothing, continuing to lie there as if dead. Lance frowned. “And don’t be dead,” he added.

It took him longer than he would’ve liked, what, with having to swim along the cliffs in search for the tunnel only to go right back to the boat after barely a minute had passed, afraid Keith had managed to slip off and drown in Lance’s absence. Thankfully, Lance finally found the tunnel and Keith didn’t fall off the boat and die — something Lance liked to call a success.

But still, taking Keith through the tunnel was a hassle. After all, Keith couldn’t breathe underwater — still that unfortunate lack of gills situation — and Lance had no idea how long a human could go without breathing. This led to him swimming back and forth through the tunnel and counting in his head, wondering if Keith would die after 20 seconds of Lance plugging his nose.

Eventually, Lance just had to give in and haul his body off the boat. If he wasted any more time Keith really _would_  slip off and drown, and despite having complained about doing Pidge this favor, Lance really would feel horrible if he managed to let Keith die now.

He ended up flipping onto his back and securing Keith on his stomach so he could plug his nose more easily. It was harder to swim this way, obstructed as he was by an entire, limp body, but he still managed. Albeit, the 20 second tunnel turned into what felt more like 30 seconds, but by the time Lance emerged in the cavern Keith gasped awake, his eyes flying open and his body struggling away from Lance’s, onto the rocky floor beside the pool of water.

“W-where am I?” Keith coughed, his breaths raspy and gross sounding. “Where did you take me? Where’s my boat?”

“I think the words you’re _trying_  to say are ‘thank you’,” Lance scoffed. He folded his arms on the rocky shore and perched his chin neatly on them. Keith glared at him.

“Look, I don’t know why you saved me —”

“How about because I’m a nice person?”

“— but I don’t need your help.”

“I’m sorry, _what_? You were drowning out there! Last time I checked, humans don’t have gills.” To be absolutely certain of this point, Lance shoved himself out of the water with one hand and reached forward with the other, pushing Keith’s wet hair away from his neck and examining the exposed skin with prying eyes.

“Get off me!” Keith shouted, and he shoved Lance backward, back into the tide pool.

Lance huffed, insulted. “That’s no way to treat your savior,” he said. He sank into the water up to his chin, glaring at Keith, the ungrateful bastard. (Lance made a mental note: _humans don’t like having their necks touched_.)

Keith growled, forcing himself to his feet. He swayed on the spot for a moment, a hand coming up to touch his head with a wince.

“You should sit down,” Lance suggested. “I mean, if you hit your head hard enough to pass out…”

“I’m fine,” said Keith. His eyes were lingering on Lance now, maybe finally taking in the fact that he was talking to a real-live mermaid. He dragged his eyes away, looking around the cave instead. Unfortunately, he spotted the exit and immediately started walking towards it.

“Hey!” Lance protested. He hadn’t saved this idiot just to be ignored — at _least_  a thank you would be nice. “Keith!”

Keith halted, spinning on the spot. “How do you know my name?”

“Telepathic mermaid powers?” Lance tried, which it didn’t seem like Keith was believing, given his flat stare. “Name’s Lance, anyway.”

“All right, _Lance_ ,” said Keith, folding his arms over his chest. His clothes were sopping wet, had already formed a puddle were he was standing. “I took that boat to prove to my brother that he didn’t need to treat me like a kid anymore, and now his boat’s probably sinking to the bottom of the ocean. It was certainly interesting to see a mermaid in the flesh, for once, but I have too many problems in my life to stay here and chum it up with you.” With that, Keith gave a sarcastic little wave and stomped out of the cave, leaving Lance to sit there and fume in the tide pool.

“It’s still storming out there!” Lance yelled after him, wishing for once that he had a pair of stupid human legs so he could stomp out after Keith and punch him in the face. God, this was the last time Lance would do Pidge any favors.

He threw himself under the water, sinking to the sandy floor dejectedly. He’d been hoping this whole adventure would turn out to be fun, that maybe he’d even have a friend by the end of it. Instead, he was worn out and had been yelled at, neither of which were particular fun things to have happen. Lance yanked off his necklace, holding it before his face and debating whether or not to activate it.

_Hey Pidge, your friend’s alive and he's a giant asshole — didn’t think to warn me about that beforehand, huh?_

While Lance continued to lay there, brooding, footsteps echoed through the cavern, easily reverberating through the water. Then they stopped.

Lance floated upward once more, pursing his lips when he saw Keith had returned. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, his jaw jutting out angrily.

“You’re back,” said Lance. Keith exhaled heavily through his nose.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Too stormy?”

“Yeah.”

Lance grinned, floating belly-up with his arms stretched behind his head. One flick of his tail and he was floating closer to Keith, looking up at him upside down. “You know, if you’re really afraid of that Shiro guy killing you, you can hide away in here. Like you’re on the run! Seriously, that sounds like the start of an awesome story.”

“Shiro’s my brother. He won’t actually kill me.”

“Betrayal stories are some of the best kinds…” Lance sing-songed. Keith glared at him, so he hastily backtracked. “Of course, yours won’t be a betrayal story. Shiro’s just mad at you because…?”

“That’s the problem,” said Keith. “He probably isn’t even mad at me. He’s probably at home, worried sick because I was stupid enough to go out in this storm.”

“Yeah, that was pretty stupid. What’d you do it for?”

“To prove a point,” Keith muttered. “He doesn’t want to teach me to sail, says the waters are too dangerous around here, and I stole his boat to prove a point.”

“And you capsized,” Lance concluded. “Proving _his_  point.”

“He wasn’t really talking about the water,” Keith muttered. “But yeah. I’m an idiot.”

Lance nodded. “Well,” he said. “Now you’ll know not to do that next time.” He turned around, pushing away from the wall and further into the pool. “But anyway, I’m just gonna —”

“Wait, you’re leaving?” Keith said abruptly, looking momentarily panicked before he wiped the expression from his face.

“Well, it is getting late,” said Lance, now feeling uncertain. “I mean, unless you wanted me to…?”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Keith said. “You can go if you want.”

“Or, I mean, I could stay,” said Lance, getting the feeling that Keith didn’t want him to leave that much after all. “I’ve never talked to a human before, so this is a great learning experience.” Finally! A smile! It was small but it was _there_ , and for some reason this made Lance feel greatly accomplished.

“You really don’t have to stay,” Keith said. His smile had been replaced by a frown, and he looked away, avoiding Lance’s eyes. “My friend’ll probably figure out where I am soon, anyway — she always does.”

“Oh, you mean Pidge?”

“You know her?” Keith said incredulously.

Lance yanked off his necklace and activated it. Pidge popped up, glanced between the two of them, and exclaimed, “You found him!”

“Pidge, _what_?” said Keith, his entire being seemingly the embodiment of astonishment. “You know about mermaids?”

“ _You_  know about them?”

“Shiro’s in the marine government — of course I know!”

Pidge scoffed, offended. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me! I had to hack so many databases to learn about them.”

“Excuse me,” said Lance, feeling left out. “Aren’t you going to thank me for saving your idiot friend?” He gestured to Keith as he said this.

“You sent him?” said Keith, and Pidge waved her hand as if it wasn’t important.

“Why don’t you just tell me where you are and I’ll come meet you?”

—

It didn’t take Pidge long to reach them. She must’ve lived somewhere nearby (and possibly already knew the island well enough to navigate it) as she eventually bursted into the cavern, soaking wet due to the storm but grinning nonetheless.

“Holy shit,” she said immediately upon her arrival. “You’re _real_!”

Then she looked at Keith who was laying flat on his back on the floor. He’d migrated into this position some minutes ago and Lance hadn’t thought to question him — humans, right? “What’s wrong with you?” said Pidge.

“I’m dizzy,” Keith muttered. “Think I have a concussion.”

“Oh my gosh! Why didn’t you say anything?!” Lance demanded. Now that he was paying attention, Keith did look pretty pale, pretty unwell.

“What could you have done?”

Lance frowned. This was a good point, but he wasn’t going to give Keith the satisfaction of telling him that.

“I guess we’ll have to spend the night here, then,” said Pidge. “You definitely can’t hike through the forest with a concussion — especially during this storm.” She had apparently come prepared for the possible outcome of sleeping in the cavern, as she pulled a bag off her shoulder and tossed it onto the ground, seeming satisfied, judging by her grin.

“I hope you brought me clothes,” Keith grumbled. He pushed himself up onto his elbows, looking towards Pidge’s bag. “I’m freezing.”

Lance sat up, paying very close attention. See, they learned a lot about humans in school: some of the languages they spoke, customs they had, things they’d done in the past, but shockingly never in their curriculum had human anatomy been included. Lance was _curious_.

Mostly, he was curious about the — foots, he was pretty sure they were called? Right now, Keith’s were covered in something Lance had never seen before. The government humans always wore giant, flipper-like attachments to their foots, but Keith wasn’t wearing anything like that at all. It made his look a lot smaller than Lance had always assumed they were.

Keith stood up carefully as Pidge rifled through her bag, pulling out clothes for both Keith and herself, proving how prepared she truly was. Both her and Keith looked at Lance at the same time, kind of just staring at him as he stared at them.

“What?” said Lance, blinking in confusion.

“Mind turning around?” Pidge finally said, and Lance gaped, offended.

“What!? Why?” Lance exclaimed.

“It’s kind of a private thing, Lance,” said Keith.

“This is so unfair,” Lance huffed, looking sullenly between the two humans. “Can’t you _at least_  show me your foots?”

“You want to see our feet?” Pidge said incredulously, and Lance nodded, pointing a finger at her.

“Yes! Feet!”

Keith frowned, looking uncomfortable.

“Oh, come on!” Lance whined. “Are those private too? Is that why they’re always covered?”

“Well, not really,” said Pidge. “We wear shoes because the ground hurts our feet.”

Lance was taken aback. “The ground hurts your feet?! That’s terrifying!”

“Just turn around while we change and we’ll let you see our feet.”

Happy enough with this solution, Lance immediately turned around and splashed into the tide pool, swimming to the bottom. When he’d come here with Hunk they’d thought it was neat because of the hidden tunnel, and also because it seemed like a good place to hide possible treasures or something. Now, it just felt a bit cramped and boring, the only entertainment the humans on the surface.

Lance hastily flipped around when he felt the water around him move unnaturally, his instincts kicking in and his fins flaring out. The humans hadn’t taken to the water with spears and nets, however, it just seemed that one of them had tossed a rock — a rock which was now sinking past Lance’s face. He grabbed it and returned to the surface.

Keith and Pidge were now dressed in dry clothes, Pidge with her hands shoved into a cloth compartment on the front of her shirt and Keith with his arms crossed. Lance threw the rock at Keith and it bounced off his chest. Keith ignored this.

And then Lance remembered what their whole deal had been in the first place, and his eyes dropped from the the human’s faces to their feet.

“ _Weird_!” Lance exclaimed, rushing to the edge of the pool and hoisting himself up to try to get a better look. Their feet ended in what looked like really tiny fingers, and as Lance watched, the toes on Keith’s feet scrunched into the ground beneath him.

“Oh-ho!” Lance shouted, pointing. “They moved! Do that again!”

Pidge and Keith continued to humor Lance, which led to Lance eventually humoring Pidge. He was laying on his back, floating on the water as Pidge stood beside him, having waded into the pool. She’d taken off her pants first, revealing a second, smaller pair of pants underneath, but the water was still relatively deep for her short stature and her shirt was wet again, billowing around her in the water. She didn’t seem to care.

It was a good thing Lance was a touchy guy, otherwise he’d probably feel really uncomfortable with the way Pidge kept running her fingers over him, squinting at where his scales softened and lost color and turned into skin. He felt ridiculous having not wanted to trust her mere days ago, the first time he’d seen her on that screen. Now he was just assured that she was an insanely-smart, supremely-curious kid who meant him absolutely no harm.

He trusted Keith too, for what it was worth — even if he was a giant pouty, glare-y baby. He was sitting on the side of the pool, his legs crossed and his hands pressed against the ground beside him. Honestly, he looked about ready to jump into the water and save Pidge from the big, bad mermaid if he had to. Lance grinned at him, showing off his very pointy teeth.

Keith’s eyes widened, and he looked from Lance to Pidge nervously, as if estimating whether he’d be able to save her from Lance’s clutches fast enough. _Yeah, right_. Lance gnashed his teeth silently, eyes twinkling with amusement. And Keith was a big loser — meaning, he took it the wrong way.

“Pidge!” he cried out, before jumping into the pool and reaching for his friend. Lance snatched her first, dragging her into the middle of the tide pool with one easy flick of his tail. This left Keith standing where they’d previously stood, spitting water out of his mouth and wiping it out of his eyes.

“Keith! What was that for?”

“He was threatening you!” Keith said, flinging a hand out a Lance, who frowned.

“Was not,” he said, and — still floating on his back — he pulled Pidge onto his stomach, who sat there in amazement.

“Holy shit,” she said. “You’re carrying me like it’s no problem! How can you be this buoyant and still swim so fast?” And then, almost as if it was an afterthought, she turned back to Keith. “You know I didn’t bring you any more clothes, right?”

Scowling, Keith climbed back out of the pool, soaked once more, as Pidge peppered Lance was questions. She seemed to find everything about him fascinating, from his gills (“That tickles!”) to his fin.

Eventually, it got late enough that Lance would have to return home if he was to avoid suspicion. He was known for being restless — often spending his days exploring and re-exploring any nook or cranny he could find — but he was also known for always coming home at night.

“I have to go,” Lance finally said, shortly after Pidge had climbed out of the water, satisfied (“For now”). “Mom’ll talk my ear off if I’m not home soon, so.”

“Woah,” Pidge breathed. “So like, you live in a community?”

“Sure do,” he said. And then, “Guess this is it then, huh?”

Pidge frowned. “Unless Keith needs saving another day. Then I guess we’ll meet again.”

Lance brightened, feeling his mouth stretch into a grin. “Until then!” he said, and disappeared back through the underwater tunnel.

And then, because Lance was an incredibly great, generous person — he dealt with the boat. It was still out there, miraculously, floating upside down. The storm had died down plenty, too, now just a steady drizzle rather than the scary, uproarious way it’d been earlier.

Lance ended up pulling the boat towards the edge of the cliffs, holding several of its random ropes and strings as he swam underneath it, tugging it along. He brought it all the way to where the cliffs got lower and lower before eventually meeting the sand, where he then abandoned it. He had no idea what to do with it, after all, but hopefully Pidge and Keith would find it the next morning and think of some way to sort it out.

After that gratuitous favor, Lance finally returned home, not quite sure whether or not he would be telling Hunk about his day’s adventures.

Of course, Lance should’ve realized that Hunk wouldn't be able to let it rest so easily. He’d taken notice of Lance’s extended absence, and during that time he’d apparently come up with a million ways to try to pester the truth out of Lance as well.

“Where’d you go? Where’d you go? Where’d you go?” Hunk said — no, _continued_. He’d been doing this for God knew how long and Lance was starting to debate swimming right off the shelf in an attempt to escape him.

“Hunk!” Lance snapped, spinning around to glare at his friend. He’d already checked in with his family, assuring them he was alive and well before leaving to hang out with Hunk. Of course, he wouldn’t have left if he’d realized it was going to be like this. “You’re driving me insane!”

“Good,” Hunk pouted. “Come on, Lance, tell me! Was it a girl?”

“No.”

Hunk waggled his eyebrows. “Was it a boy?”

“Can you just shut up already?”

“Was it a Pidge?”

“ _Shh_!”

“AHA! So it _was_  a Pidge!”

“No, it wasn’t! I just think you shouldn’t go blurting that name around,” Lance whispered, glancing around their surroundings carefully.

“As if anyone knows who she is,” Hunk scoffed, but thankfully, somehow, perhaps by the order of God, he finally shut up.

It was nice of Hunk to shut up, because Lance could finally hear his thoughts again. He was unsurprised to find them revolving around the two humans he’d met hours earlier. Despite the anxious way he was probably supposed to be feeling — the way Hunk would definitely be feeling, had he been with Lance — he just felt excited.

He’d seen _humans_. He’d talked to them! And they were nothing like how he’d expected them to be. They weren’t cruel or evil or tricksters, trying to lure Lance in to chop off his tail or something. No, they’d been as curious as him — in Pidge’s case, as least. And Keith had been just as distrustful as Lance had first felt. They were just like mermaids, really, minus the tails.

They were… humaids. _Land_ maids.

“Hell _ooo_?” Hunk pestered, wiggling his fingers in front of Lance’s eyes. “Earth to Lance — you still in there?”

Lance blinked, refocusing his attention on his friend. “Sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “Just zoned out for a second. What were you saying?”

“Just that I’m onto you,” Hunk threatened, glaring at Lance very non-menacingly. Hunk was the kind of guy who could say something like this and immediately have it disregarded, just thanks to his gentle demeanor in general, which was about the worst mistake anyone could make. That’s where everyone went wrong with Hunk. It’s how he slipped under the radar!

He was all, _Oh hey, I’m Hunk, nothing suspicious or untrustworthy about me, **except for the fact that I just discovered all your secrets from primary sources and it wasn’t even hard because everyone trusts me.**_

So while Lance brushed off Hunk’s threat with a laugh, he also made a mental note to not let anyone know about his recent trip to the surface, and also to make sure he wasn’t being followed if he ever did it again.

Just like that, Lance’s mind halted, so sudden and jarring it was like the wheels in his brain rusted over and squealed to a stop. _If he ever did it again_? Was he already thinking of going back there?

No, no way. He’d learned all sorts of cool crap, _more_  than enough cool crap, and that should be enough for him. The best way for him to avoid getting caught was to just not do it ever again. Besides, it could be dangerous… Technically… Even though Lance had just declared that humans were landmaids.

He let out a great sigh, bubbles escaping from his mouth and racing towards the surface. He couldn’t stop himself from wanting to follow them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> feel free to come to [my tumblr](jilliancares.tumblr.com) and chat to me about this fic or voltron or whatever you want!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Woah, calm down, Captain,” Lance said, holding his hands up placatingly. “If it means so much to you, I’ll teach you.”
> 
> Now, there were several problems with this statement, the first of which being the fact that Lance had no idea how to sail a boat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uhhh ngl the little cavern thing with the pool in this story??? stolen Directly from h2o ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> anyway, enjoy this update!!

Lance wasn’t spying on Keith. And if someone were to accuse him of doing so, he would deny it vehemently, because he _wasn’t_ , okay? He’d told himself he wasn’t going to keep interacting with the humans for his own safety — not necessarily from the humans, but from Allura. She’d be downright pissed to find out he’d been breaking just about every rule in the history of rules to chit-chat with a few legged folk.

So, no. He wasn’t spying. He was just... loitering. In the same area he’d first seen Keith.

And how was he supposed to know if Keith would ever show up again? It wasn’t like Lance knew the ways of humans. It wasn’t like he’d guessed that _maybe_  Keith would show up again, determined to master the whole boat thing once more.

It was really just wishful thinking, the fact that Lance popped up around here every day, hoping he’d see a familiar boat or mullet. Or at least, that’s what Lance had convinced himself. He’d been trying not to get his hopes up, especially since Pidge hadn’t bothered to contact him since they’d met almost two weeks ago. (Two very long, Hunk-pestering-filled weeks.) But to be fair, Lance hadn’t contacted her either.

But now, Lance was rubbing his eyes, trying to make his hallucination go away, because he swore he was staring at a boat in the distance. On that boat was an unmistakably Keith-like figure, wearing shorts and a t-shirt and darting all around the boat, pulling ropes left and right like his life depending on it. Lance had no idea what it was doing to the boat — the sail was kind of swinging in different directions, but that might’ve just been a things boats did. Lance still had no idea how they worked.

After rubbing his eyes and finally convincing himself that this wasn’t a hallucination, Lance ducked back beneath the waves before resurfacing beside the boat. It wasn’t really going anywhere, probably because Keith had somehow managed to make the sail come down.

“Long time, no see,” Lance called, and Keith let out a yelp. He jumped backwards in surprise, except unfortunately, in this case “backwards” meant “over the railing and off the boat”, and he tumbled into the waves gracelessly.

Lance reached down and yanked Keith, coughing and spluttering, out of the water. “I’m starting to think you like falling off your boat.”

“You surprised me!” said Keith, shoving his hair out of his eyes and panting. He broke out of Lance’s grasp and struck out towards the ladder off the side of the boat, pulling himself up. He stood on the boat for a moment, looking at the dead sail and the open water around them, before sighing and plopping down, letting his legs dangle off the side of the boat as he rested his arms on the metal railing.

Lance grinned at him from below. He’d imagined running into Keith a million times recently, thinking of all the funny things he would say and how Keith would be so excited to see him, but now he was just coming up blank.

“Looks like you chose a better day to sail,” Lance commented. Keith huffed.

“Yeah, I know. Shiro told me I was an idiot for taking the boat and to never do it again.”

“And you ignored him?”

“Of course.”

Lance had to fight back a smile. For some inexplicable reason, he was charmed. Here Keith was, so stubborn and downright stupid for taking the boat out after what happened last time, but doing it all the same.

“Why do you want to sail it so badly?”

This managed to get a surprised look out of Keith, and he looked up from where he’d been staring at his hands to look at Lance instead. “Well, it’s… it’s supposed to be a rite of passage. In my family, at least.”

Lance waited patiently, figuring Keith would continue if uninterrupted.

“My dad taught Shiro when he was like, ten, and then he passed away — my dad, not Shiro, obviously — and I never got to learn. And now Shiro’s in the government and he’s always busy and he doesn’t even want to teach me anyway and —”

“Woah, calm down, Captain,” Lance said, holding his hands up placatingly. “If it means so much to you, I’ll teach you.”

Now, there were several problems with this statement, the first of which being the fact that Lance had no idea how to sail a boat. The second was that contact with humans was strictly not allowed, and yet Lance was willing to sacrifice however long it took despite the mermaid-to-human contact.

He was _weak_ , okay? He was an innately curious person with a need-to-please kind of attitude, meaning the fact that Keith wanted to sail so badly drew Lance right to him (and the fact that he was human and consequently off-limits certainly helped).

“There’s no way you know how to sail a boat,” said Keith.

“You don’t know the first thing about me!” said Lance. “Besides, you totally need a man-in-the-water kind of deal going on. You fall off a lot.”

“Because of _you_.”

“And storms,” Lance pointed out helpfully. “So, whatdya say? You and me, me and you — us against the raging waters of the sea!”

“I don’t need your help,” Keith said, his eyebrows furrowed. He had expressive eyebrows, Lance had noticed, though he mainly seemed to use them for glaring. And his hair — though now sopping wet — was pulled away from his face, haphazardly thrown into a ponytail at the back of his head. Lance had been fascinated by it the last time he’d seen it, once it’d dried, anyway. It’d looked so fluffy and soft.

“Fine, fine,” Lance said loftily, putting his arms up in the air and floating away from Keith. “You master boat-sailing over there and I’ll just float… over here.” He demonstrated this by laying on his back, flicking his tail and floating away from Keith.

“You’re gonna stay here?” Keith questioned.

“The ocean’s my oyster, buddy.”

“Don’t you mean world?”

“What?”

“The world is your oyster?”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Lance, and Keith just shut his mouth and shook his head, standing up once more.

Keith didn’t seem deterred by Lance’s presence at all. He just went right back to failing at sailing. Sure, he probably had a much better idea of how to sail than Lance did, but Lance was pretty sure that he could execute it just as well as Keith was doing. Obviously, different strings and levers and whatnot did different things on the boat, but Keith didn’t seem to have any idea of what controlled what.

The sail was flapping in the wind once more, and Keith went and grabbed another string, trying to secure it to something. This string had the sail straightening out, but despite the sail finally being upright, the boat didn’t move.

“Hey Keith!” Lance called. Keith didn’t turn to look at him, but Lance was sure he was listening all the same. “I think you’re supposed to have some wind when you sail!”

The wind didn’t come. Hours passed and Keith continued to fiddle around on his boat. Lance got bored and hungry and left to catch some fish, and when he came back, Keith was still there, though he’d apparently given up. He was laying flat on his back, legs dangling over the edge of the boat once more. Lance snuck up on him and grabbed his ankles.

“Agh!” Keith yelled, sitting up and trying to wrench his legs back onto the boat. Lance clung on, and Keith finally seemed to see him, and he sighed.

“I should’ve known it was you.”

“I’m gonna pretend you sound more excited to see me.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it like, illegal for you to talk to humans? Why do you insist on bothering me?”

Lance ignored the rude part of this statement and narrowed his eyes. “How do you know that?” he demanded.

“I told you, my brother’s in the government. Marine sector — specifically merfolk. He tells me everything.”

“Riiight, right — the same brother who won’t teach you to sail even though you keep getting yourself stuck out here.”

Keith seemed to take offense to this, even though it was true. He glared at Lance. “You don’t know anything about him, all right? He has a good reason.”

“What, is he scared of boats?” Lance scoffed. He didn’t mention the fact that he was pretty scared of boats, himself — when they weren’t being sailed by Keith, anyway.

Keith’s jaw clenched and he didn’t acknowledge Lance, glaring somewhere over his head instead. Bored of being ignored, Lance surged out of the water and grabbed for the metal railing railing, pulling himself onto the boat beside Keith, whose eyes had gone wide and was now leaning away from Lance.

“Can you stop looking at me like that?” Lance demanded.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m going to eat you, or something?”

Instead of this reassuring Keith and making him stop looking at Lance all weird, it had the kind of opposite effect. Lance groaned, laying back on the deck as he’d seen Keith do and flicking his tail through the water where it still hung off the boat. “I’m just bored,” Lance further explained. “And you’re interesting. Is it so bad I want to be friends with a human?”

“You want to be friends,” Keith said flatly, and Lance nodded, his head cushioned on his arms.

“I think you need all that you can get,” Lance said. “You’re not very approachable, you know.”

“Didn’t stop you.”

“I’m ignoring that.”

Somehow, though, some _way_ , whatever Lance had said had done the trick. Keith stopped looking at him all weird and stopped trying to make him go away. He went back to trying to sail, stepping over Lance whenever he needed to get to the other side of the boat. Sometimes Lance would grab at his feet as he passed, and Keith would kick him until he let go.

Keith didn’t get any better at sailing with Lance’s company, and the wind didn’t really pick up either, but he _did_  seem to be in less of a bad mood. Earlier, Lance had heard him cursing and kicking things angrily, but now he seemed content to just fail miserably and not get angry about it.

“Hold this,” he said to Lance at one point, and Lance held onto a string as Keith stepped over him and crossed to the other side of a boat, doing something with another string. And then, miraculously, the sail went taut — and wind filled it.

The boat whooshed forward, Lance’s tail trailing behind in the slip stream from the boat. “We’re doing it!” he cheered, sitting up and watching the ocean move past them. “Aha! I knew I could help you sail!”

Keith snorted from the other side of the boat, but he was grinning too. “We’re just lucky the wind picked up.”

“Yeah — how are you ever gonna get back?”

“I’ll use the engine,” he said. “Drive it back.”

Lance blinked. “You’ve… had an engine this whole time? And you struggled with the sail for no reason?”

“I want to learn to sail.”

“So you’ve said.”

Keith sighed, tying his string to the railing and coming over to sit next to Lance. He leaned his back against the wall of the cabin behind him.

“So,” Lance said, glancing over at Keith. His hair had dried again, wisps of it escaping from his ponytail and hanging in front of his face. It was only after seeing this that Lance realized his own hair had dried, and he idly reached up to touch it, curiously running his hand through it. He’d never touched dry hair before.

Keith looked over at Lance, reminding him that he’d been trying to say something, and he shook his head, putting his hand back down on the deck. “Shiro’ll be proud of you now, huh?”

Keith’s expression darkened. “I don’t think so.”

“Man, this Shiro guy sounds like a jerk,” Lance huffed. “What’s his problem?”

For a second, anger flashed across Keith’s face, before being replaced with what looked like resignation. “I told you,” he said. “He has a good reason.”

“Which is?”

“Our dad died in a boating accident,” Keith explained, getting a faraway look in his eyes as he did. The boat continued to sail gently through the waves, lulled forward by the breeze. “I was nine when it happened.” He swallowed. “My dad used to love his boat. He took us out on the water all the time, and when Shiro turned 16, he bought him a boat of his own. This boat.”

Lance stayed quiet, knowing it wouldn’t be appreciated if he spoke up. Keith was staring out at the waves, but Lance had a feeling he wasn’t seeing the ocean. “The day it happened, I was being a little brat,” Keith said, and he huffed out a laugh, though he didn’t really sound amused. “I was impatient for my dad to teach me how to sail, and he was insistent that I wait another year. He and Shiro went out for a ride, and I decided to stay home and pout.” Keith pointed to the beach as he said this, his finger aimed at one of the houses there.

“I don’t know how my dad forgot to check the weather, but there’s no way he was expecting that storm to come. I — I didn’t see it happen, but I knew something was wrong. Neither of them came home that night. The next morning, our neighbor — Pidge’s mom — came and got me. She brought me to the hospital.” At first, Keith’s voice had been full of emotion, kind of quiet and wavering as he’d recounted his story. Now, it was just dull. Lifeless.

“Shiro was there. He hadn’t woken up yet, but he only had one arm.” Here, Lance gasped. No mermaid could survive with one arm — they’d bleed to death, and that was only if something worse didn’t get to them first. “But when he did wake up, he didn’t want to talk about Dad’s boat capsizing or the shark that got him. He just kept going on about the girl that’d saved him. A mermaid.”

“Holy shit,” Lance said, unable to help himself. Keith’s mouth quirked up at the corner, his eyes flicking over to him.

“That’s why he went into the government — he wanted answers. And he said I couldn’t tell anybody about the mermaids, or they’d think he was crazy. I never told him I thought he was crazy too.”

“You didn’t believe him?” Lance said breathlessly. He’d leaned forward eagerly during the storytelling, unaware of himself doing so.

“Of course not,” Keith scoffed. “That was before he got his job, though. Then he really learned the truth, and I’ve never seen him happier. I think he’s looking for the mermaid that saved him, whether he realizes it or not.”

Lance sighed. “That’s so romantic.” He rested his arms on the railing, and his chin on his arms, staring out at the sea. It was so strange, so different, seeing it from up here. It looked untouchable — nothing like the endless and welcoming depths below it, the home Lance had always known. “Just like a fairytale.”

“Really?” Keith scoffed. “All that tragedy?”

“Every fairytale has to have a sad part,” Lance explained.

“Mhm,” Keith hummed, sounding disbelieving.

“You’re just jealous ‘cause you’re not the main character,” Lance said, turning to smirk at Keith. “Shiro has the mission of love and you have the mission of — what, sailboat?”

Keith rolled his eyes. “And yet I’m the one who found the mermaid.”

“Excuse you, _I_  found _you_ ,” Lance corrected. “I still can’t figure out why you want to sail this thing so badly, though. How are you not terrified of the sea after what happened to your family?”

Keith shrugged. “I’m not really scared of anything.”

“Pffft! That’s the biggest lie I’ve ever heard,” Lance said. He was starting to feel uncomfortably warm, the sun so hot on his skin, and without another word he pushed himself off the boat and into the ocean. The water felt wonderfully cool and refreshing and he took a few deep breaths through his gills, savoring the feeling of water in his mouth and throat.

He rejoined Keith moments later, floating beside the boat and smiling at him. Keith leaned back, trying to look like he hadn’t been searching for Lance beneath the waves, but it was obvious. Lance smirked at him.

—

The first time Keith had seen Lance, he’d been in a state of shock. Almost drowning would do that to a person.

One moment he’d been standing on his boat, wrestling with the ropes while he got tossed around by the wind and the waves, and the next he’d been plunged underwater, saltwater surging into his mouth and ropes tangling around his legs. He wasn’t even sure how they’d ended up there, only that he’d been tugging on them fruitlessly, even as somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d taken on a resigned kind of acceptance.

 _I’m such an asshole,_  he’d thought to himself, still tugging, glaring at the impossible looking knot. /Dying on Shiro just like Dad did…/

And then, of course, there’d been Lance. Lance, the mermaid who Keith still hadn’t really believed existed, despite the fact that Shiro literally worked with them. There was knowing something existed and _knowing_ , and Keith learned the difference right then.

At the time, he hadn’t known why Lance was saving him, only that his chest had been aching and he’d been on the verge of sucking in a lungful of water — and then he was gasping in air, held above the waves, saved by the very kind of creature that had once saved Shiro. His mind had been reeling, his heart beating, blood pumping on overdrive. And somehow, concern for the boat had pushed all that aside — Shiro’s boat, _Dad’s_  boat.

When he’d finally returned home the next morning, clothes dry but crusty with saltwater, Shiro had hugged him so hard it’d been painful. He’d crushed the air out of Keith’s lungs, thanking God he was alive on one breath and telling him what an idiot he was on another.

It probably made him an asshole that he was out again, now. Yes, he wanted to sail the boat, had wanted to for as long as he could damn well remember, but for once, it hadn’t been the lure of the tides and waves that’d drawn him out here. Instead, it’d been curiosity, a weird, stupid longing to see Lance again.

Despite being wary of him at first, afraid he was actually some evil predator playing with his next meal, Keith had been unbearably curious about him — not that he’d shown it. And so yes, it was Lance that had drawn him back to the sailboat he didn’t know how to sail. It was Lance that made him disregard how scared and angry Shiro had been when Keith had first taken the boat. And it was Lance that was here, now, swimming around his boat and grinning up at him.

“I’m not lying,” Keith lied, looking down at Lance. The boat was still moving steadily along, the sail finally positioned correctly, and the ocean spray was kissing his bare feet. “I’m really not scared of anything.”

“No one’s not scared of _anything_ ,” Lance scoffed, and then he surged up — faster than what should’ve been possible — his wicked sharp teeth bared and his hands reaching for Keith.

He couldn’t help it — he jerked backward, eyes widening, and Lance laughed as his hands caught onto the railing before Keith’s face, his tail dragging in the water behind him. “Scared ya,” he said, and Keith rolled his eyes. It was instinct to move out of the way of something jumping at you, especially when that something was a strong as fuck mermaid with sharp as fuck teeth.

Still, Keith knew Lance wouldn’t hurt him. He’d definitely been wary of him at first, but after spending hours with him today, there was no doubt about it — Lance was a loud, bored, teenage mermaid. He was curious about Keith and humans and liked to talk about his friend Hunk and his (girlfriend?) Allura and how he could fight sharks (so he said).

He’d found that he didn’t really mind the chatter and that he was able to satisfy plenty of his own curiosity without having to outright appear curious. First of all, there was the fact that Lance barely ever looked at Keith when he talked. He stared at the sky or the sea and let his mouth run like a motor, which gave Keith every opportunity to stare at him without being caught.

Keith figured it was a pretty normal reaction, to stare at something you’d never seen before. And, assuming most merfolk looked something like Lance, then it was safe to assume mermaids were beautiful. The most obvious, attention-grabbing aspect of this beauty was the tail. Lance’s was blue — not like the ocean, but like the sky. The sky at dawn, when it was soft and peaceful and about to be interrupted with a myriad of colors. The scales shown and sparkled underneath the light of the sun, and the end of Lance’s tail seemed to flick idly through the air or the water as he talked. The end of his tail was mostly see-through, so thin and only tinged with the blue liberally spread everywhere else. Despite himself, Keith wanted to touch it.

Where his tail ended, his smooth, dark skin began. The blue of his scales grew dimmer and clearer over where his waist, fading into his skin naturally. If he had legs, he’d probably be described as wiry, but that just didn’t seem to fit when describing a mermaid.

There was webbing in between his fingers, connected just below his knuckles, and this along with his gills were tinged the same blue as his tail. Everything about him begged attention, from the way he gestured as he spoke to the way his eyes shone with expression whenever he did happen to glance at Keith, leaving him wondering if every mermaid’s eyes matched their tails.

Thankfully, Keith had gotten all his staring in earlier in the day. He only looked at Lance for a moment before he knocked that triumphant grin off his face — by knocking him off his boat. He planted his hands on Lance’s chest and shoved. Lance’s face took on a look of surprise as his hands slipped from the railing. Unfortunately, he found another thing to hold onto — Keith’s feet.

He grabbed them as he went down, and this momentum yanked Keith forward, making him groan as his chest slammed into the railing. Lance didn’t seem to notice, too occupied making himself acquainted with Keith’s feet once again. He touched the bottom of one with a finger and Keith yanked it back instinctively.

“Hey!” Lance protested, trying to grab it again, and then Keith was trying to scoot backward, trying to get Lance off him.

“That tickles!” Keith protested, when Lance somehow won and grabbed onto his feet again.

“Really? That’s so weird.”

The day continued as such, with unexpected ease and enjoyment. But eventually, and despite Lance’s protests, he had to go.

“Shiro’s going to be home soon,” he explained. “If I get home fast enough, he might not notice I took the boat.”

Lance pouted from where he lay in the water, easily keeping up with the boat with lazy movements of his tail.

“Will you take it out again?” Lance asked, wearing an expression Keith could only describe as hopeful. “Now that you know how to sail?”

By no means did Keith know how to sail. Sure, he’d gotten the sail up and the boat moving, but that was under these easy weather conditions, and mostly due to luck anyway. He didn’t really know what he’d done to get the sail like this in the first place, and he didn’t know how to operate just about any other part of the boat besides.

But Keith knew that wasn’t really what Lance was asking. For some reason, he was — for lack of a better word — obsessed with Keith. He’d loitered around and pestered Keith until he’d finally relented, and somehow, throughout the day of hard and mainly unrelenting sailing, Keith had started to enjoy Lance’s company.

He wasn’t the best at making friends. The only ones he had were Shiro, Pidge, and Matt, but Pidge said Shiro didn’t count because they were brothers and that Matt didn’t count because technically, he was friends with Keith through extension of Shiro. So that kind of narrowed him down to one friend, plus Lance. It figured that the one time he’d make a friend all on his own it’d be with a mermaid, someone who nobody even knew existed.

“Yeah,” Keith found himself saying, without really thinking about it. He wasn’t the best at… acting at ease. He wasn’t the best at getting comfortable with people or getting close to them or making them like him. But he’d already opened up to Lance, and Lance seemed to like him already, despite his possibly slightly grumpy exterior. “Yeah, I’ll sail it again.”

Lance grinned. “Awesome,” he said, and then he disappeared beneath the waves. For a second, Keith thought that was it, but then he was jumping out of them again, soaring like a dolphin beside the boat and letting out a carefree laugh. After that, he really was gone, and Keith went home smiling, wondering when he might go sailing again.

—

Keith may have gone home smiling, but that smile didn’t stick around for long.

Walking into his house revealed Shiro is all his Disappointed Big Brother glory. His arms were crossed, prosthetic under flesh, and his eyes were narrowed into slits. He raised an eyebrow when Keith halted in the doorway, the boat’s keys swinging to a stop around his fingers.

“Shiro,” he said, half surprise and half resignation. He was caught.

“Keith,” Shiro said lowly, eyes flicking from Keith’s face to the keys in his hand. “You took the boat out.”

Keith imagined what Lance would say. Lance, who was loud and talkative and curious enough to pester and befriend a human. Lance, who had bothered to activate Pidge’s invention in the first place. Lance, who probably broke rules all the time and got caught half as much.

 _“Pshh, whaaat? You think_ I _took the boat? No, no way! I was just... cleaning it._ You _took the boat out, didn’t you?!”_  Yeah, that seemed about right. Deny and accuse, turn everything back on them.

That wasn’t how Keith operated. He accepted defeat when it came, knew when he was caught, when the game was over.

“Yeah,” he said. He finally unfroze, kicking his shoes off by the door. When he was little, his dad had always reprimanded them for that, had made them pick them up and put them in the closet, wanting the house to look neat. For a while after his death, Keith had continued doing that, old habits and what not. But over time he’d stopped, reverting back to bad habits without anyone to reprimand him for it. Several pairs of his and Shiro’s shoes lay scattered by the door.

A lot of things had changed in the years since their dad died. At first, the house had seemed quiet, empty. They’d spent nights together in the living room, eating casseroles neighbors had given them (and continued to give them, for a while). It didn’t take long before they began to resent the quiet, the absence of an entire life in their home, and now they always had something making noise, the TV on or the radio playing.

Not to mention, no one had been around to tell them to pick up their stuff, to throw away their trash, and it wasn’t long before their house was in a state of disarray. Neither of them had acknowledged it, just moving naturally around the growing piles of clothes and dishes and trash without doing anything to combat them. Keith had been too young to really think of it as a problem, and Shiro had likely been too depressed to care — suddenly without a father combined with being responsible for the life of his younger brother.

They’d eventually cleaned their house after Pidge had come over one day, saying she was bored and wanted Keith’s company. She hadn’t said anything at the time, but later her mother had come over and helped them clean up the place, emphasizing the importance of cleanliness and threatening them with the idea that cockroaches would invade if they kept it up (Shiro had always been deathly afraid of bugs, so luckily this kicked him into action. Ever since then he was always on Keith’s back about making messes).

“You really don’t care, do you?” Shiro scoffed, and Keith stopped in his tracks. He’d been walking past his brother, the worn wooden floor creaking under his bare feet. “You don’t care that I’m worried about you. That your life could change just as quickly as mine did.”

Keith felt shutters come down over his expression. Shiro knew damn well that wasn’t true — Keith had been devastated back then. Losing their father had been one thing, but his dad wasn’t really what’d been on his mind right after the accident. More pressing matters had begged his attention, such as the fact that Shiro woke up screaming in the night, how he was angry all the time from feeling useless, how he was in pain. Months passed before he got his prosthetic, their town having put together a fundraiser to buy an arm for the two boys without a father.

“Your fears aren’t mine, Shiro,” Keith said instead of any of this, and he briefly saw anger flash across Shiro’s face. He was usually great at staying calm and collected, but then again, Keith didn’t usually go around doing the very thing Shiro didn’t want him to do.

“You can’t take the boat out,” Shiro said, mouth turned into a frown and expression hard.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“I can and I will — give me the keys.”

“Shiro!” Keith argued, but Shiro was unyielding. Keith had been holding onto the keys for years now, a familiar weight in his pocket. Sure, he’d never taken the boat out and attempted to sail it before, but that hadn’t stopped him from going out on the docks and visiting it, making sure it was in good condition and cleaning the deck, hiding away in the cabin. Shiro had never bothered to ask for the keys; he never went down to the boat.

Shiro just held out his hand, eyes hard, and Keith glared at him. He slapped the keys into his palm and stormed past him, up the steps.

They didn’t normally fight. Usually they both came home at the end of the day and fixed dinner together, or if they were feeling lazy, ordered in. They spent their free time together and enjoyed each other’s company — they always had.

Keith knew Shiro was just trying to look out for him. He knew he was worried, afraid Keith would end up getting hurt, but Keith didn’t need anyone to worry about him.

He trudged into his room, collapsing on his bed with a huff that had his bangs flying up. As he glared at the ceiling, his thoughts tumbled through his head, and he remembered what he’d told Lance. _Yeah, I’ll sail again._

Great. Now he was a liar.

—

Lance was bored.

Admittedly, this wasn’t a foreign feeling to him, but normally it was easier for him to find something to do to relieve it. There were tons of exciting things to explore, such as the underwater caves off the edge of the shelf and the shipwrecks further out, not that either of these things were actually… allowed.

But while begging Hunk to accompany him to an old shipwreck might have once been his idea of fun, now he was just hoping to find entertainment in a certain legged person. It’d been a week since Keith had come out to sail and time seemed to be dragging by, the waters continuously uninterrupted by the sight of his boat. When Lance had asked if Keith was going to sail again soon, he’d meant _soon_  soon, and disappointment was encroaching on his boredom. Lance couldn’t help wondering if Keith hadn’t liked him all that much after all, despite feeling like they were becoming friends at the time.

The only thing Keith’s absence was good for was keeping Hunk off his back. Lance rarely went entire days without spending time in Hunk’s company, so when he went hours without pestering him, the big guy got suspicious.

Another problem was the fact that, for all Hunk knew, Lance hadn’t even bothered to activate the device since that first time together. But Lance couldn’t activate it now, even when Hunk expressed interest in doing so, because Pidge would be all, “Hey Hunk, why didn’t you come with Lance when we met that one time?” and Hunk would know that Lance had met up with humans, and he’d be both anxious and upset, thanks to being left out.

So, no, calling Pidge wasn’t an option. Lance had to continue to pretend to be wary of the device, always suggesting they not contact Pidge just yet. Lance had even gone so far as to say they had to play hard to get.

Of course, Lance deciding not to call Pidge didn’t mean she’d gotten the same memo. He was just lucky Hunk wasn’t around when the device started buzzing around his seashell necklace, startling him so bad that his tail jerked, sending him backwards through the water.

Pidge’s face popped up after Lance activated the device, and he grinned, unable to help it. He had really liked Pidge, after all.

“Hey Pidge,” he greeted, and Pidge held up a hand in a wave. “What’s up?” Speaking English underwater always felt a little strange, the water filling his mouth somewhat unnaturally, but he wasn’t not used to it. Some things were easier expressed in actual words, rather than the sounds they could otherwise communicate with, so it could often be heard amongst the chirps and trills of their own language amongst their colony.

“I’m calling because of Keith,” Pidge said. “Again.”

“Don't tell me he’s in danger?!” Lance said, immediately looking towards the surface, eyes roving for proof of a storm. The waves looking lulling and gentle, however, not the rolling, thunderous appearance they took on during storms.

“No, no, he’s fine,” Pidge hastened to say, and Lance looked back to the screen, to her.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Shiro got mad at him for taking the boat out again,” Pidge explained. “He wanted me to —”

Pidge suddenly broke off, turning around to look behind her. This revealed the sight of Keith clambering through a window behind her, grunting as he struggled over the window sill. Once settled on the floor, her looked up.

“Pidge!” he said immediately, sounding accusing. “You called him without me?”

“You were taking too long. I was bored,” Pidge said by way of explanation, and Keith crossed his arms.

“I had to climb out my window,” he said. “I didn’t want Shiro to realize I was leaving the house.”

“And you had to climb through my window too?” Pidge said, raising an eyebrow as she did. Keith’s face went red.

“Well — your mom could’ve told Shiro I was here, or something. Shut up.”

Pidge just snickered, but she finally turned back to a confused looking Lance.

“Soooo, Keith isn’t in danger?” Lance concluded, looking between the two friends.

“No,” Keith scoffed, glaring at Pidge. “I just — I wanted to tell you that I can’t sail anymore. Shiro took the boat keys.”

“Oh.” Lance deflated. “So… Does this mean I won’t see you again?”

Keith looked down, his hair falling in front of his eyes. Pidge scoffed. “Can’t you just go back to that cavern?”

Lance gasped. “Pidge! You’re a genius!” To be honest, he’d forgotten all about that cavern. It wasn’t one of the places he frequented — he’d only ever been there twice before. But it was totally the perfect place!

“So I’ve been told,” Pidge sighed happily, and she rested her chin in her hand. Attention drawn to the movement, Lance glanced at her hand, only to gasp in horror.

“Your fingers!” he said, eyes widening as he looked at them. “They’re black! Are you sick?!”

“What? Oh — no,” she said, glancing down at her hand where her nails had turned black. “That’s just nail polish, Lance.”

“Nail polish,” Lance repeated, and Pidge held her hand out, obscuring most of her face and blocking out the image of Keith completely. “This is like, some sort of human expression?” Lance ventured. “Like clothes?”

“Yeah,” Pidge said casually, and then she looked back to her hands, immediately picking at a nail. “Why, do you want to wear some?”

Lance’s eyes widened. He imagined his own nails with this so called polish on them and grinned. “Will it work on me?” he demanded, and Pidge nodded.

“I don’t see why not,” she said. “Your nails are just like mine, from what I saw of them last time.”

“Awesome!” Lance cheered. Filled with excitement, he couldn’t help swimming off some of his adrenaline, doing loops through the water and making trilling sounds form the back of his throat. The screen stayed with him the whole time, oriented from the device dangling around his neck, but when he came to a stop Keith and Pidge were grinning, and Keith had moved closer to the camera.

“What color do you want?” Pidge asked.

“Blue,” Keith said, before Lance could answer, and Lance scoffed.

“Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m blue all over! Give me a new color. I want red!”

And so it was settled. They’d meet again in the little cavern, this time on purpose and accompanied by nail polish.

—

Lance knew he was being a bad friend. Hunk never kept secrets from him — he was the epitome of an open book, easily and expertly inviting Lance into all areas of his life, never bothering to hide his thoughts or feelings from him. Lance just wasn’t like that.

He didn’t want people to know when he was hurting or upset, when he was embarrassed or scared, and so he hid it all behind a mask of bravado. Of course, most of the time Hunk could see right through that mask, but that didn't mean he didn’t try.

“Lance,” Hunk sighed, looking at him with big, sad eyes. “Since when do we keep secrets from each other?”

“What are you talking about?” Lance scoffed. “We _don’t_  keep secrets from each other. Are you keeping a secret from me? How dare you!”

“Lance —”

“I said _how dare you_!” Lance flung out his hand, finger pointed in Hunk’s face, and Hunk went cross-eyed.

“Lance,” he said slowly. “Is your fingernail red?”

Lance yanked his hand back, shoving one behind his back and the other into his hair, where he scratched his head inconspicuously. “Um,” he said intelligently. “You’re imagining things?”

“Are you sick? Is that what this is?” Hunk demanded.

“What? No —”

“Are you dying, Lance?! What do red nails mean? Show me your hands, we have to go see Allura!”

“No, Hunk!” Lance protested. “It’s nothing, it’s — it’s this stuff I found. Human stuff. Nail polish. I just… wanted to give it a try.”

Hunk slowly calmed down, looking at him skeptically. “Human stuff?”

“Yeah. I found it and I was afraid you were going to tell me not to use it.”

“Well of course I would have! Lance, we don’t know what human skin or nails are like! That... That _polish_  stuff could be toxic to us!”

“Well, it’s not,” Lance said, sniffing dramatically (and blowing bubbles from his gills as a result). “Plus, my nails look good.” He extended his hand once more, dangling it in front of Hunk’s face. With a sigh, Hunk obliged, grabbing his hand and examining his nails.

“It does look good,” he conceded. “Can I have some?”

Lance floundered (pun not intended). “Um, no.”

“What? Why?”

“‘Cause… then we’d be matching! And, _pfft_ , we can’t _match_!”

Hunk was looking at him warily. Suspiciously. Distrustfully.

“ _And_ ,” Lance continued, nodding now, trying to look convincing. “Also because it’s gone. I got rid of it.”

“You got rid of it,” Hunk repeated, voice flat.

“Yep. Because... it was empty. After I used it, it was empty, and so I got rid of it.” Lance grinned. Air-tight alibi right there.

“Lance, you’re a shit liar and I’m gonna find out what you’re hiding.”

“Dammit.”

Hunk held up two fingers to his own eyes before turning them on Lance, the universal gesture of, _I’m watching you_.

Lance sighed. He knew it hadn’t been an exceptionally bright idea to let Pidge put nail polish on him, much less to meet up with her and Keith in the first place, but he couldn’t really find it in himself to regret it. Sure, Hunk likely wasn’t going to be the only one to freak out over his nails, but Lance couldn’t help thinking it was worth it. Every time he caught sight of them he grinned, excited about the new color upon his person.

Of course he loved his tail — it was a beautiful blue, his mother told him all the time, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t used to it. And besides the red nail polish being a fun thing to be wearing in general, he couldn’t help remembering Keith and Pidge every time he saw his hands.

They’d met in the cave around noon, Pidge with a bag slung over her shoulder and Keith with his hair pulled into a ponytail.

“Lance,” Pidge had greeted, a huge smile overcoming her face as she’d appeared in the entrance of the cave, Keith steps behind her. “You’re here already!”

“I’m very punctual,” Lance had claimed, though neither of his new friends had seemed to realize he was lying. He was horrible at getting places on time — the only reason he’d been so early was because he was jittery with excitement and anticipation.

Immediately, Pidge had kicked off her shoes and gotten rid of her outwear, pointing proudly to the clothes left underneath and stating, “Bathing-suit.” Keith apparently hadn’t been wearing one of these, as he’d stayed sitting cross-legged on the edge of the tide pool while Pidge had jumped right in, coming back up with her glasses askew.

She’d painted his nails not long after, though first she’d had a fresh round of questions she’d come up with ever since their first meeting. The hardest part about having his nails done was the fact that he had to stay still to let them dry afterwards, unable to touch anything. Pidge even told him not to go underwater, so he’d sat there with his hands splayed on the ground for as long as it’d taken to dry.

While waiting, Pidge had pulled two smaller, brown bags out of her backpack, handing one to Keith and unwrapping the other herself. They’d pulled out their lunches, both consisting of a sandwich, an apple, and a bottle of water.

“What,” Lance had said, squinting at the water bottle, “is _that_?”

Keith had squinted at Lance. “What? You mean our water bottles?”

“Why do you carry those around?”

“To drink,” Keith had said, and Pidge’s eyes had gone wide, taking on that look of curiosity and need-to-know that Lance was rapidly growing used to.

“Do the merfolk not drink water, Lance?” Pidge had asked eagerly, and Lance had looked at her like she was insane.

“Of course not,” he’d said.

This had progressed to both Keith and Pidge demonstrating how to drink water. It had simultaneously delighted and horrified Lance, afraid that something was going horribly wrong in their bodies. It just seemed so _wrong_  to let the water continue past their throats, past where their gills should be.

Afterwards, Lance had grown curious enough to try it for himself. He’d taken Keith’s water, careful not to mess up his nails, and put it to his lips. Immediately after taking a sip, his gills fluttered open and the water drained on either side of his neck, surprising all three of them and making them burst into laughter. Lance had kept trying, eventually with the assistance of Pidge (who attempted to hold his gills down) but this just led to the water refusing to go down Lance’s throat entirely, and he coughed it back out.

“It just goes against every one of my instincts,” he’d claimed, the majority of Keith’s water now gone, though Keith didn’t seem to particularly mind. “I filter water without thinking about it, it’s as unconscious a thing as swimming.”

Now, despite knowing that Hunk was upset with him for lying and that he’d be in big trouble if Allura ever found out about his excursions, he couldn’t help smiling. He just wanted to see his new friends again.

“Wow.” Lance snapped out of his thoughts, shaking his head and blinking. He’d been idly swimming around the reefs, barely paying attention to where he was or where he was going, but now he was abruptly aware that he was before Allura herself.

They’d been friends since they were kids, but ever since her father had passed away they hadn’t really had much time to just be friends anymore. Still, he hadn’t forgotten about her and she clearly hadn’t forgotten about him, what with how often she excused his rule-breaking.

“Oh, hey Allura,” Lance said. Allura was obviously expecting something from him, her hands on her hips and her eyebrows raised in surprise.

“What, no pick-up line?” she said, looking at him incredulously. “No —” her voice deepened in a poor imitation of Lance “— _there may be plenty of fish in the sea, but you’re still the only one for me._ ” She winked dramatically, and Lance grinned.

“I knew you secretly liked my pick-up lines,” he said, smiling winningly, and Allura rolled her eyes.

“I despise them,” she said sternly. “I just can’t remember the last time I swam past you without hearing some horrible line.”

Lance gasped dramatically. “You take that back!”

Allura just shook her head. “It’s rare to find you so distracted. It almost makes me think you’re up to something!” she joked, and Lance laughed. Loudly. Too loudly.

“Oh Allura, you crack me up! Anyway, gotta run. Whales to befriend, the usual.”

Allura’s expression hardened. “Don’t go bothering any whales, Lance.”

“Sorry! Can’t hear you over the sound of my awesome whale befriending skills!”

Lance laughed as he swam off, Allura yelling threats after him. He really would have to be careful if he didn’t want to get caught.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my tumblr](http://jilliancares.tumblr.com)  
>  :]


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I should have told you sooner, I was just afraid of how you would react.”
> 
> “How else would I possibly react, Lance?” Hunk hissed. He’d released Lance and was now crossing his arms, bubbles flying up from his gills as he breathed furiously.
> 
> “With love and support?” Lance tried, smiling, but Hunk’s expression remained stony.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to everyone whose been reading and commenting so far!! i appreciate it Lots ily a milly my dudes

“Swim with me,” Lance said, grinning as he gestured enticingly.

“No way.” This had been Keith’s answer the last several times Lance had asked, both today and days previously. It was hard to coordinate when they would meet up, so Lance stopped by the cavern almost every day just to see if Keith and Pidge had decided to visit. This was working out pretty well for him so far, and sometimes they even planned their next meetings before they left. Lance had eventually fessed up to Pidge about the fact that he’d stolen the device he now wore around his neck, and how he could get in trouble if it was discovered he had it. Ever since then, she hadn’t contacted him with it, promising to save it for emergencies.

Today, both Keith and Pidge were in the cavern — sometimes the other was busy and they came alone. When it was just Pidge, they usually spent a lot of their time learning about each other’s species. Pidge told him about how airplanes worked and strange diseases humans could get and how they knew less about the ocean than they did about space. In return, Lance told her about life in the colony, about how Allura was the princess and pretty much everything he did was against the rules and how whales were actually really fun to swim with. He even told her all about Hunk, about how he was his best friend and partner in crime (when he could convince him to participate in said crime, anyway).

“Why isn’t he here?” Pidge had asked, having listened attentively while Lance had rambled on about a time when he and Hunk had nursed a baby seal back to health (in secret).

“He… doesn’t know about any of this,” Lance had sighed. “Talking to you through the device was one thing. I don’t know how he’d react to seeing a human in person.”

Pidge had frowned. “I hope he isn’t upset with you when he inevitably finds out,” she’d said, and Lance had huffed because she was _right_. Hunk _always_  found out. “Or, you know, you could tell him. Before it all blows up in your face.”

Keith didn’t lecture Lance during his solo-visits, so Lance was leaning towards appreciating when it was just him a bit more. He didn’t bombard Lance with questions either, instead sitting by the side of the pool and listening as Lance rambled about whatever was going on in his life, whether it be school, family, friends, or some adventure he’d recently gone on (definitely never exaggerated). Though Lance loved telling Keith his stories, loved watching his face for the small smiles and huffs of laughter, he liked it even more when Keith got to talking. His voice was always quieter than Lance’s, not echoing all around the cavern like his usually did, and he talked about Shiro or Pidge, talked about the town he lived in or the job he had, serving hot, black water to thirsty people, apparently. It didn’t really make sense to Lance, how humans needed to drink water to live but then had to pay money for it, but he guessed that was just the way it was with humans.

The biggest difference between the two friends, however, was the fact that Pidge would happily got in the water with him and Keith absolutely refused to. He hadn’t swam with Lance once, despite all the times Lance had begged him to.

“Swim with meeeee,” Lance begged now, tugging on Keith’s wrist to try to further encourage him to get in the water.

“He won’t go,” Pidge said, head cushioned on her now familiar bag and legs thrown idly over Keith’s lap. “He’s boring.”

“You’re telling me,” Lance scoffed, and Keith rolled his eyes.

“I don’t want to get wet.”

Lance imitated this in falsetto, and Pidge snorted.

He was so distracted by the fun he was having with his friends, in fact, that he didn’t feel the change in the currents around him, didn’t feel the arrival of another mermaid in the cavern. Not until Hunk popped up behind him, anyway.

“Lance,” he said.

“Hunk!” Lance exclaimed, spinning around and looking at him with wide eyes. Hunk finally seemed to catch onto the fact that Lance wasn’t alone, eyes flickering between the two figures behind Lance before he gasped. He grabbed Lance’s arm and yanked him backwards, away from the two humans.

“What the hell are you thinking?!” he exclaimed, and before Lance could say anything, he dragged him under the water, hiding their conversation from human ears.

“Hunk, calm down!” Lance tried, holding up one hand placatingly, the other still held captive.

“How long has this been going on?” Hunk demanded, casting fervent glances towards the surface, where both Pidge and Keith had stood up and were now peering down into the water. “They could kidnap you! Or kill you!”

“No, Hunk, seriously — _calm down_. They’re my friends —“

“ _I’m_  your friend!”

“— and they won’t hurt us!”

“You don’t know that,” Hunk said seriously, voice low, stern.

“I _do_  know that. Look, I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner, I was just afraid of how you would react.”

“How else would I possibly react, Lance?” Hunk hissed. He’d released Lance and was now crossing his arms, bubbles flying up from his gills as he breathed furiously.

“With love and support?” Lance tried, smiling, but Hunk’s expression remained stony.

“This isn’t funny.”

“Just — come and meet them! They’re really nice, you’ll like them!”

“ _Or_ ,” Hunk said, eyes wide and mouth parted as he paused, clearly for dramatic effect, “they’ll _kill us_!”

Lance groaned loudly. “They won’t,” he promised, trying to express how serious he was about this through words alone. “And for the record, I didn’t just call up Pidge and ask to hang out. There was this storm —”

“Wait, that was Pidge up there?” Hunk said, glancing to the surface once more. He let out a surprised yelp when he was greeted with Pidge’s face, submerged under the water and plugging her nose.

 _“Hi!”_  she tried to say, but it came out garbled and strange and she pulled her head out of the water immediately after. Lance could hear her coughing.

“She’s really smart, Hunk,” Lance said enthusiastically. “You guys could learn a lot from each other.”

Hunk crossed his arms, looking unimpressed. Except he had a tell. His lips were pursed, eyes flickering towards where Pidge and Keith remained.

“Did you know that humans drink water?” Lance tried, and Hunk’s brows furrowed.

“What?”

“I know, right? They just — swallow it. Like it’s food.”

“You’re lying.”

“Come meet them and they’ll show you, I promise. Oh, and don’t touch their necks! They don’t like that, for some reason.”

And that’s how Lance ended up dragging a reluctant but insanely curious Hunk back towards the surface. He popped up with a grin, shaking his hair out of his eyes as Hunk lingered somewhat behind him. Pidge’s hair was similarly soaked from having shoved her face underwater, and Keith was standing beside her with his arms crossed, looking wary.

“Hey guys,” Lance said.

“I take it this is Hunk?” Keith said, and Lance nodding excitedly.

“I _told_  you to tell him, Lance,” Pidge said, practically vibrating on the spot with excitement. Lance could see her eyes flickering everywhere, trying to take all of Hunk in at once. No doubt she wanted to be in the water, up close and personal, but she was smart enough to hang back for now. “I told you he’d be mad. I told you!”

“Yeah, yeah, you told me. Hooray.”

“Guys, Hunk,” Lance said, waving his hands between them in introduction. “Hunk, guys. You know Pidge —” he pointed at Pidge, who waved with what looked like super-speed, grin encompassing her entire face “— and this is Keith. He has a mullet. And a tragic past.” Keith rolled his eyes but he lifted his fingers off his arm in a poor imitation of a wave.

“Nice to meet you,” Hunk said cautiously. He slowly shifted to Lance’s side, a bit closer to the oh-so-threatening humans.

“Nice to meet you too!” Pidge said. She promptly sat down at the side of the tide pool, the movement startling Hunk and making him jerk. Pidge didn’t seem to notice, too busy shoving her glasses further up her nose. “It’s interesting — yours and Lance’s tails are so different; you almost wouldn’t expect such different colors, especially since you’re from the same colony, right?”

Hunk’s face twitched, as if he didn’t want to give in, but that big brain of his picked up the conversation automatically, and his mouth was running probably before he had given it permission to. “Actually, you’re completely right. Even we don’t know why, but our tail colors have nothing to do with our genetics — my parents’ tails are green.”

“Wow!” Pidge breathed, eyes widening. Lance could practically see the gears whirring in her brain. “That’s really, really, fascinating…”

Meanwhile, Keith was still standing in the same place. Someone who didn’t know him very well might think he looked perfectly calm, expression indifferent and back straight, but Lance could see the uneasy tension there. Especially when he was used to Keith sitting on the edge of the pool, occasionally even sprawling out.

“What’s wrong with you?” Lance demanded, coming up to the side of the pool and shoving himself up. Keith’s eyes flickered down to him.

“Nothing.”

“You’re scared again, aren’t you?”

“What?”

“The first time you met me, you didn’t trust me. You thought I was going to eat Pidge,” Lance pointed out, grinning and flashing his teeth at Keith.

“You were a stranger and Pidge was my friend. I was just looking out for her.”

“Right, right. And now Hunk is a stranger, and Pidge —” Lance glanced over where they were still enveloped in a conversation “— is examining the webbing on his hands.”

Keith glowered at her, no doubt silently yelling at her to get away from the dangerous creature she barely knew.

“Hunk is a big softy,” Lance said reassuringly. “He would never hurt anyone, I promise.”

Keith was silent for a moment. And then, “His teeth are bigger and sharper than yours.”

Lance let out a sound of outrage. “That are _not_!” he yelled. “They’re the same size! Smaller, if anything!”

Hunk, apparently, had tuned into their conversation, and he scoffed. “You’re a liar,” he said. “We measured _last week_.”

“And I said that didn’t count,” Lance sniffed, crossing his arms over his chest. “Allura’s biased.”

“How could Allura possibly be biased?”

“Um, she’s obviously in love with me and knew I wouldn’t be offended if she lied to make you feel better.”

“You’re delusional,” Hunk said. “And if you keep pining after Allura, everyone else our age’ll pair up and you’ll be alone.”

“You take that back!” Lance shouted, flinging a finger out at Hunk, who was grinning. Lance dove underwater and careened towards his stomach, but Hunk caught him and stopped his momentum, pulling him out of the water abruptly. Lance spluttered for a moment, trying to reorient his breathing again, before he slumped against Hunk. “My teeth are bigger,” he whined.

“We can measure right now,” Pidge said excitedly. Lance perked up, immediately swimming towards the ledge and thrusting himself upward, grinning and baring his teeth.

“They’re hig, hiiiight?” Lance said, speaking without moving his mouth.

Hunk came up beside him, baring his teeth similarly. Pidge knelt in front of them, gaze flickering from mouth to mouth, and Keith joined her, squatting down with a sigh. He glanced between their teeth once before speaking.

“Hunk’s are bigger,” he said. Hunk laughed and Lance gaped.

“I thought we were friends!” he cried, pouting as Hunk continued to cheer. Keith smirked at him.

“Friends don’t lie to each other,” Keith said with a shrug, and Lance flung himself dramatically into the tide pool, floating on his back with an arm flung over his face.

Thankfully, this seemed to be the start of a great new friendship. Hunk lost his reservations about Lance’s new human friends and actually enjoyed himself, sharing theories with Pidge and teaching her about random merfolk things Lance hadn’t thought to share, boring shit like their biology and customs. Keith loosened up too, realizing that Lance was in fact a good judge of character. Maybe he even caught onto the fact that, while Lance would never have let them hurt Hunk, he’d similarly never have let _Hunk_  hurt _them_. He genuinely loved everyone here, and he would protect them to the ends of the ocean if he could.

And Pidge finally got her wish, jumping into the water and swimming with Lance and Hunk. Hunk and Pidge were especially interested in how long each of them could hold their breath. It turned out, human lungs were much smaller than theirs, Pidge swimming up and gasping for breath after barely a minute. Lance even got Keith to demonstrate drinking water, Hunk watching in rapt fascination.

Eventually the day had to come to an end. Pidge and Keith stood up and said reluctant goodbyes, and Lance waved enthusiastically, Hunk giving a less energetic, more subdued wave of his own.

They swam back to their colony slowly, lazily drifting through the water as Lance waited for Hunk to take it all in. He knew it was a lot, knew what was likely going through Hunk’s head right now — fascination, excitement, adrenaline. Fear. Fear that he was being tricked, that Keith and Pidge were like the humans from the stories, malicious and evil, wanting to sheer the scales off their bodies, or something.

Lance had always considered himself a great judge of character. He got bad vibes from bad people and was almost always proven correct. Lance had decided to trust in the fact that he hadn’t felt anything malevolent about Keith and Pidge, letting his trust overpower his irrational fear.

But Hunk couldn’t judge people the same way Lance did. He might feel suspicious of the people Lance felt fine with. It might take more for him to decide to trust Lance’s new friends.

“So?” Lance said, after he was too bored and anxious to wait any longer. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you’re an idiot,” Hunk grumbled. “I’m thinking that you never should’ve trusted humans on a whim. I’m thinking that you’re _lucky_  these are actually a pair of humans with good intentions.”

Lance was grinning. He nudged Hunk in the arm. “Aaaand?”

“And,” Hunk sighed, glancing at Lance out of the corner of his eye. “I’m thinking that I’m gonna end up seeing them again. A lot. With you.”

Lance laughed. He whooped, spiraling through the water and splaying his arms out, trilling as he flew.

“And I’m _still mad at you_ ,” Hunk added.

“No you’re not!” Lance cheered. He looped back, spinning circles around Hunk and laughing as he tried to grab his tail.

—

Even as he did it, digging though the sand and shifting aside rocks, pretty but not pretty _enough_ , he could practically hear Hunk’s voice in his ear. Warning him. Reprimanding him.

Lance ignored his inner Hunk.

He already had a thin, strong length of rope tied around his wrist for safe keeping, and now all that was left was finding the perfect rock.

It wasn’t a big deal, okay? He just wanted to find something pretty to give to Keith. For Keith to remember him by. He just kind of, _maybe_ , liked the idea of Keith wearing something that would constantly remind him of Lance. A physical weight, just heavy enough to be noticeable, resting between his collarbones, making him think of Lance with every breath.

 _Don’t do it, Lance,_  inner Hunk warned. Lance tried to ignore him. _You_ know _gifting’s a classic part of our courting rituals…_

“Shut up,” Lance said to his inner Hunk. “He doesn’t know that.” Plus, he wasn’t giving it to Keith because he wanted to  _court_  him. He just… really liked him. Lance enjoyed all the time he spent in his company. And Keith was really pretty and he deserved something equally as pretty to wear around his neck.

It was true that what Lance was doing was, technically, very similar to the courting ritual between two mermaids. When expressing one’s attraction, gifts were exchanged. But that didn’t mean Lance couldn’t give a gift to attractive human out of the kindness of his own heart!

Suddenly, Lance’s eyes widened and he dived downward, hand reaching out and scooping up the perfect rock. It was a deep, dark red — almost black — and shaped like a triangle. It was smooth all over and shiny and just _perfect_. Now, Lance would just have to carefully create a hole for him to loop the string through, and then he’d be able to give it to Keith.

It didn’t take Lance long to actually accomplish this. He’d always been pretty crafty, good at making bracelets and necklaces for both himself and his younger siblings, and making Keith’s necklace wasn’t much different, though he did do it more carefully than he normally would’ve bothered to.

The next time he was going to see Keith, he had the necklace in his hand, and Hunk was staring relentlessly at his closed fist.

“All right,” said Hunk, curiosity finally winning over politeness. “Either you’re gonna tell me what you’re holding or I’m gonna have to wrestle you.”

“It’s nothing,” Lance hedged, and Hunk moved just a little bit closer to him, a glint in his eye that said, _Prepare to be wrestled_. “It’s just — I… Well, I made Keith a necklace.”

This surprised Hunk so much he stopped swimming, suddenly floating aimlessly through the water instead of by Lance’s side. He recovered quickly, shaking his head and coming back to Lance.

“Lance…” he said, in a perfect imitation of Lance’s inner Hunk. “That doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

“You don’t sound like a good idea.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Hunk argued, but Lance just stuck his tongue out at him.

“I know what I’m doing,” he promised. “And it’s not like what you’re thinking, anyway. I’m just doing something nice.”

“Mhmm,” Hunk said disbelievingly. “And what about Pidge? Why didn’t you do anything nice for her?”

Lance felt his eyes widen, felt his fingers clench around the necklace. Panicking, he said, “Who’s Pidge?”

Hunk sighed. He sighed a familiar, _Lance is fucking up_  sigh, which Lance certainly didn’t appreciate.

“Stop sighing at me,” Lance said, glaring at his friend. He knew when he was making a bad decision, okay? He knew what it felt like to continue to make bad decisions even though he _knew_  they were bad decisions. He was very well acquainted with them! And as such, Lance knew for certain that this wasn’t one. This was different.

“You’re making a bad decision, Lance,” said Hunk.

“Hunk, you’re treading in dangerous waters,” Lance warned.

“Have you even thought about why you want to give him a necklace so bad?”

 _Because he’s gorgeous and sweet and grumpy and it’s only fair if he has to think of me at least half as much as I think of him_. “I’m gonna demote you as best friend…”

“At _least_  show me the necklace,” Hunk demanded, and Lance knew it was a bad idea. Trepidation filled him but he couldn’t think of a way to get out of it, and so he uncurled his fingers, presented the rock that he’d spent hours swimming around looking for, and Hunk’s face fell.

“Oh, Lance,” he said sadly.

“Not another word,” Lance hissed, glaring, clenching his fist around the necklace once more.

“This can’t end well,” Hunk said, eyes wide and filled with worry. Lance looked away.

“Of course it will,” he said, swimming a bit faster to get ahead of Hunk. “Because I’m not expecting anything to come from this. I’m just being nice.”

“I just don’t want to see you hurt,” said Hunk, and Lance made a flippant gesture with his hand.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You won’t.”

Going to the cavern was just as exciting as it always was, even with the weight of Hunk’s downer mood clogging the water around them. By now the journey had become familiar, the tides and currents and sights something recognizable.

Popping up in the cavern, it was never quite clear who was going to be there first. When they hadn’t made plans, Lance never let himself get his hopes up, always chanted something in his mind about how his friends were probably busy and weren’t going to be in there anyway. And then, when they _were_ , he felt his entire spirits lift, felt adrenaline and excitement rush through his body.

It was completely different when he knew they were going to be there, however. It was all anticipation, excitement wracking his entire body the whole swim there, growing stronger and stronger the closer he got to the cavern. At the last moment, right before he breached the surface in the cavern, he always tried to guess whether they were there already or not.

 _Not here_ , he guessed, emerging into the cavern first, Hunk a few tail-lengths behind him. He burst through the surface, the air now familiar on his skin as it once hadn’t been, and felt a grin envelope his face as his eyes locked onto Keith first and then Pidge. He’d been wrong!

“Hey guys!” Lance greeted, slightly out of breath.

“Hey Lance,” they chorused, just as Hunk emerged beside him.

Same as with Keith and Pidge, Hunk couldn’t always make it. Sometimes he had schoolwork or chores or something other to attend to, leaving Lance to come to the cavern alone. But when they were all able to make it, a certain kind of enthusiasm filled the air. It was just amazing, how much the four of them clicked. It felt like they were meant to be friends, despite the fact that they were different species and not actually supposed to even be seeing each other.

“Swim with me,” Lance said, a greeting Keith had grown used to.

“Nope,” he answered, before plopping down beside the pool, refusing to even put his feet in. Lance pouted, and Keith smiled innocently.

Struck with a sudden idea, Lance held up his closed fist. “If you come in the water, I’ll give you a present,” he said, tilting his head enticingly.

“Mmm, don’t think so,” Keith said. He looked amused, even as Lance’s face dropped and he crossed his arms over his chest.

“You’re the worst, you know that?”

“You’re gonna give that present to me anyway, aren't you?” Keith said knowingly, and Lance pursed his lips. Keith new him too well!

 _Or_ , maybe he was telepathic! Lance didn’t know nearly enough about humans. Plus, if humans were telepathic they never would’ve told mermaids about it, meaning it never would’ve been taught in school, _meaning_ …

Eyes widening with his newfound realization, Lance stared at Keith mistrustfully. _Cough if you’re hearing this Keith. Keith? Keith! Cough if you’re hearing this!_

Keith didn’t cough, instead staring at Lance with a confused look on his face. _KEITH ARE YOU READING MY MIND?_

Keith quirked an eyebrow. Lance gasped. “Are you reading my mind?!” he demanded. For a moment Keith looked taken aback before he burst into laughter.

 _“What?”_  he said incredulously, laughter bubbling up out of his chest as Lance continued to stare at him. He looked at Pidge carefully.

“Humans can’t read minds, right?”

“No, Lance,” Pidge said. “Humans definitely can’t read minds.”

Lance sighed in relief, before looking back to Keith, who was still giggling. He sighed happily — one of those long, light sighs that happen after a really good bout of laughter.

“Ugh, fine,” Lance finally said, succumbing. “Here’s your present.” He shoved the necklace into Keith’s hands, watching as Keith turned it over in his fingers, thumb running over the smooth edges and eyes widening in surprise.

“Wow, Lance,” he said softly. “This is really cool.”

“Ah, yeah, well. It was no big deal,” Lance said, rubbing the back of his neck. “It was like — the first rock I saw. You looked like a person who likes rocks, so.” He chewed on his lip, looking to the side and trying to convince himself he wasn’t blushing. “You like it, right?” he said hastily, finally looking back at Keith desperately. “It’s okay if you don’t! I can get rid of it. I can feed it to a shark. You know what, there’s probably a cooler rock out there, so if you just give that one back to me —”

“I love it,” Keith said, interrupting Lance, and he instantly relaxed, shoulders falling down from where they’d risen to his ears and hands untangling from his hair — when did they even get there?

“Oh, awesome. Awesome. Cool.”

He could feel Hunk’s glare in the side of his head. Suddenly, Pidge spoke up.

“I like rocks,” she said petulantly. “Why didn’t I get a rock necklace?”

Lance ignored her. He watched with rapt attention as Keith lifted his hands and put the necklace on, the stone falling right in between his collarbones. Lance watched for a moment with wide eyes, heart beating hard in his chest as he watched the stone rise and fall with Keith’s breaths.

“Thanks,” Keith said, and Lance’s eyes shot up to Keith’s own, away from the rock settled around his neck.

“Oh yeah, totally. S’no problem.”

Pidge cleared her throat loudly. “If it’s no problem, can I have one?”

Lance glanced at her briefly. “There’s not a whole lot of rocks down there,” he lied. Pidge narrowed her eyes at him, and Lance smiled, looking away. “Who wants to play that weird game with the paper again? The one about fishing?”

—

It was a rare day of Lance being on hunting duty. Jobs were frequently shifted throughout the colony, everyone taking turns doing different tasks and pulling their own weight. It just so happened that Lance got assigned to hunting duty less often than pretty much everyone else, besides children and the elderly.

“Lance, can you please stop trying to catch the fish with your bare hands? We have the spear for a reason,” Allura chided, and Lance shushed her.

“You’re scaring them _away_ ,” he hissed, slowly creeping closer to the school of fish darting this way and that. “Besides, it’s so much cooler to catch them like this.”

Allura rolled her eyes. She made a quick movement and suddenly several fish were lined up on the spear.

“Allur _aaa_ ,” Lance whined, turning to pout at her. “I had those!”

“Really?” Allura said, feigning confusion. “Seems like I’m the one who has them.”

“You’re the worst,” Lance huffed, but he couldn’t help grinning. He never got to hang out with Allura anymore — it was just lucky that they were assigned to hunt the same day. Or was it? Lance had no idea who made the schedules, it could be Allura herself for all he knew.

The hunt continued, every pair going off different ways and gathering food, putting the dead fish in the bags they carried. Lance and Allura had chosen to pair together, the two of them chatting and joking around as they caught fish (and Lance actually _did_  catch some, thank you very much).

“Lance,” Allura said, as Lance was getting ready to spear a fish unawares. “I’m worried about you.” Surprised, Lance jolted forward, scaring the fish away and cursing under his breath. It’d been a big, yummy looking one too.

“Worried that I’m not gonna be able to pull my weight on this hunt? Yeah, me too,” he said sarcastically. He crossed his arms, raising an eyebrow at her. “What is this about?”

“I just want to know what’s going on with you,” she said softly, smiling that sweet small smile that Lance used to be obsessed with.

Wait, _used to be?_

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lance tried. “Also, I really will be in trouble if I don’t catch enough fish.”

Allura rolled her eyes. “I’m the princess,” she said. “They won’t care unless I do.”

“Point,” Lance seceded, and Allura smirked.

“So?” she said, crossing her arms and looking at him seriously. “Are we gonna do this the easy way or the hard way?”

Lance shook his head and raised his hands, trying to placate her. He was still holding his spear, so he tried to look as open and trusting as he could while holding a weapon. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about, Princess. There’s nothing wrong with me, everything’s fine in my life, and even if it wasn’t, I wouldn’t bother you with the gritty little details.”

Allura glowered. “Hard way, then,” she said. She snatched the shared spear out of Lance’s hand, wordlessly ending his allotted time and starting her own. “Mark my words, Lance — I’m gonna find out what’s wrong with you, and I’m gonna fix it.”

“You’re delusional,” Lance said, but he shrugged all the same, trying to appear unbothered. In all honesty, Allura getting too interested in him could be a real problem. She could really set her mind to things when she wanted to, and having her find out about Keith and Pidge was in no way a good idea. “I think maybe you’ve lost your touch.”

“I do not lose my touch, McClain,” she threatened. As if to punctuated this, she stabbed the spear through the water by his ear, making him flinch. She swished the now speared dead fish in front of his face. “I’m gonna find out what’s going on with you.”

—

Allura’s threat was a problem. It was definitely something to pay attention to; he’d have to be even more careful if he didn’t want to get caught.

But Lance wasn’t thinking about that right now. Instead, he was thinking of the way more exciting and pressing matter at hand, which was the fact that _Keith was here_.

It’d been a while since he’d had time alone with Keith — definitely since before Hunk found out about him and Pidge. Plus, neither of them had even planned to meet up today. It was just kind of a habit, for Lance to check the cavern when he had some spare time. Lately, they always had plans to meet each other, kind of a schedule they followed and stuck to. This was completely out of the blue.

“Keith,” Lance said, unable to hide his grin. His eyes flickered from Keith’s face to his neck, where Lance’s necklace still hung. He felt all warm and giddy inside. “You’re here.”

Keith smiled back. He was already sitting in his usual place, a book perched open on his knee. Lance knew about books, but he’d never seen one in person before. He moved closer to Keith, curious.

“So are you,” Keith said. His fingers idly messed with the corner of the pages of his book. He cleared his throat suddenly, looking down at his book for a moment before looking back up. “Um. I have something for you, actually.”

“Oh yeah?” Lance said, even closer to him now. He was wondering if he’d be able to reach out and touch the book without getting yelled at. “Is it the words _‘Hey Lance, let’s go for a swim!’_? I’m right, aren’t I? Tell me I’m right!”

“You’re wrong.”

“Boo.” Lance pouted, finally close enough to prop his elbows on the cavern floor, his chin in his hands. “Then what is it?”

“Um. This.” Keith reached into his pocket and pulled out a thin bracelet. It was metal, a simple chain that looked like it’d fit around Lance’s wrist. “It’s no awesome stone, but... Well, it’s stainless steel, so it won’t rust.”

Lance blinked, mouth open and eyes locked on the bracelet Keith had extended towards him. “You’re giving me a gift back?” he said, and Keith shook the bracelet obnoxiously.

“What does it look like?” he scoffed, and Lance finally reached out, carefully taking it from him. Keith didn’t know about their customs. Keith didn’t know what it meant to give a gift back, but... Well, maybe that made it even better. Keith wasn’t giving him a gift because Lance was trying to court him (which he _wasn’t_ ), he was just giving it to him out of the kindness of his own heart, out of gratitude. “Well? Are you gonna put it on or just hold it forever?”

Lance spluttered, before shoving his hand towards Keith impatiently. “You could at least help me put it on,” he said, and Keith made an exasperated noise, but his fingers were incredibly gentle as he fixed the bracelet around Lance’s wrist.

Lance tried not to stare at the sight of it against his skin. Tried not to ogle the newest addition to his appearance. His red nail polish was long gone, scrubbed off after having too many people bugging him about what was wrong with him.

“Thank you,” Lance finally said, remembering that his mother raised him right and he was a polite young man. Keith just smiled, and Lance decided it was time to consider this moment finished with before he combusted. “So,” he said, possibly a bit too loudly. “Whatcha readin’?”

“It’s about this wizard,” Keith said slowly, as if gauging Lance’s reaction.

“Wizards aren’t real,” Lance pointed out.

“Neither are mermaids,” Keith said. “But that’s why it’s called a fantasy. It’s all made up.”

“Like a fairytale!” Lance gasped, suddenly pushing up with his hands and rising higher than Keith.

“Yeah, kind of,” Keith agreed.

“I love fairytales,” Lance said fervently. He looked down at the book. It was _huge_. He’d been to hour-long story sessions before, but this looked like it was an even longer story than that. “Can you read it to me?”

Keith’s eyes widened in surprise. “Oh, I mean — I guess. It’s the fifth book in the series, though.”

“I don’t care,” Lance said hastily, and Keith shrugged as if to say, _suit yourself_.

Keith read to Lance for a long time. He was incredibly patient too, answering Lance’s endless questions in an attempt to understand what was actually going on and, _wait, who’s Hedwig again?_  They didn’t even get close to the end, but the story was riveting and Lance was enraptured the whole time. He got more and more comfortable as Keith read, eventually laying on his back on the cavern floor with only the end of his tail submerged in the water.

Eventually, Keith trailed off, closing the book over his finger. Lance lifted his head a bit, turning to look at him, but Keith wasn’t looking at his face. His eyes were concentrated on Lance’s tail, the end of it gently swishing in the pool.

“How long can you stay out of the water for?” he asked, watching as a Lance’s tail continued to move.

“I don’t know,” Lance said. He flicked his tail up, pulling it out of the water entirely. It wasn’t that being out of the water bothered him, it was just that he was so used to it. He belonged in it. “Probably a pretty long time? I can breathe fine, it’s just my tail would dry out eventually. That’d be uncomfy.”

Lance held his breath as Keith slowly reached a hand out towards his tail. Keith had never really touched him before. Sure, Lance had grabbed at Keith’s hands and ankles, had maybe touched him in passing, but Keith had never made to touch him first. Not like he did with Pidge, anyway, ruffling her hair or patting her back or whatever.

And then Keith was touching him. It was different from Pidge, all cold, scientific interest, wanting measurements and textures and information. Keith’s was a softer touch, simple and curious. It was gentle, the tip of his finger outlining a single one of Lance’s scales, so softly Lance could barely even feel it.

“You’re warm,” Keith said, suddenly pressing his hand flat against Lance, who snorted.

“I’m warm-blooded, Keith,” he said, propping himself up on his elbows. Keith still wasn’t looking at him, still running his hand carefully over Lance’s tail.

“Here,” Lance said suddenly, flipping the end of his tail up closer to Keith. It was arching through the air, backside towards the ceiling of the cave as the end dangled down before Keith’s face. “Feel my fin — it’s the best part.” He couldn’t help encouraging him, it was just so exciting to see him expressing interest in Lance, see him wanting to touch him.

Carefully, Keith reached up, running his hand over the thin membrane of the end of Lance’s tail. Not every mermaid was the same — they all had their differences, like all species, and most of those differences came from their tails. Besides the color, there was also a lot to do with shape. The end of Hunk’s tail was broader, sturdier, definitely not as thin as Lance’s. This made him a powerful swimmer, especially adept for swimming for long distances, his stamina incredible and his tail moving him easier through the water.

Lance wasn’t quite the same. His tail was thinner — it could bend easily and was super flexible. Unlike most, he could turn really quickly in the water, which made showing off and goofing around especially fun. Plus, his tail was built for speed — he could swim faster that practically everyone he knew.

Although the best part about his tail, in his opinion, was the texture. When he was little he’d always grabbed it in his hands, always held onto it anxiously and ran his fingers over the soft expanse of the thin membrane. It felt indescribable.

“It feels like silk!” Keith exclaimed, looking awed as he continued to touch Lance. He finally looked away from his tail to look at his face, though his hands didn’t stop moving over it.

“I have no idea what that is.”

Lance continued to entice Keith’s curiosity, eventually having them both sitting up, Keith’s face close and his fingers oh so carefully touching his gills.

“They feel different when they’re dry,” Lance explained, lifting a hand to touch the side of his neck that Keith wasn’t touching. “I didn’t know that until recently, though.”

“They feel kind of like your tail,” Keith said, and Lance hummed in agreement. Then, smirking at Keith, he fluttered his gills open, making Keith yank his fingers back in surprise. Lance laughed but he grabbed Keith’s hand, bringing it back to his gills again, ignoring Keith’s glare.

Still, Keith wasn’t the only one who was curious. He’d obviously been hiding his curiosity all this time, as Lance had always gotten the impression that he didn’t really care, that he wasn’t interested in the being that he’d never before seen in person. It was actually pretty nice to know he'd just been pretending that whole time, but seeing Keith suddenly so unreserved made Lance want to explore his own curiosities as well.

And yes, Lance knew that whatever was going on in his pants was off-limits. Pidge had made that pretty clear the first day they’d met, though that hadn’t exactly stopped Lance from being curious about it. But that wasn’t the only thing that had caught his attention, obviously.

There was still Keith’s gill-less neck, so interesting and weird to look at. Keith had shoved Lance away when he’d tried to touch it that first day. And, of course, there was Keith’s hair. It was longer than Lance’s. Longer than Pidge’s.

Most importantly, it looked really, really soft. It was big and fluffy and fell softly around his face and Lance wanted to bury his hands in it, wanted to squeeze and pull and run it through his fingers.

“Can I touch your hair?” Lance blurted, no thought put into it.

Keith’s eyes widened and Lance slammed his mouth closed, afraid he’d scared him away. Oh God, Keith was gonna be weirded out he was gonna pull away from Lance he was going to close off—

“Sure,” he said, and Lance felt himself gape. He couldn’t even move his hands towards Keith’s hair because they were jelly, his entire body in a state of shock.

Expressionless, Keith reached forward and grabbed one of Lance’s hands, tilting his head to the side and moving it towards his hair. The second Lance made contact with his hair, he came back to life. He sat up straight and shoved his other hand into Keith’s hair as well, both hands practically caging his head. He couldn’t _help_  it. He’d been right! Keith’s hair was _so soft_.

He was running his hands all through it, barely even paying attention to what he was doing as he let the strands filter through his fingers, light and soft against the webbing between them. It took probably too long for him to come back to himself, to really realize what he was doing, and when he did he saw Keith’s face, bright red and surrounded by a mess of hair — Lance’s doing.

“Sorry,” Lance said suddenly, as soon as he realized what he was doing. “It’s really soft.”

Keith just shook his head the barest amount, eyes wide and face still as red as a lobster. “S’okay,” he murmured, but Lance still carefully pulled himself away.

“I’m a really touchy guy,” he explained, holding his hands up guiltily. “I know not everyone is.”

“Oh,” Keith said. He looked fucking adorable, his hair all ruffled around his face. “That’s okay,” he said. “I don’t mind.”

Lance grinned, and Keith zoned in on his teeth. “How do you never hurt yourself with those?”

“These?” Lance pointed to his teeth, gnashing them. “I just don’t. Actually, sometimes I’ll bite my cheek or something — that always hurts. But what about yours? How do you even chew anything?”

Keith frowned. Lance forgot his entire speech about being too touchy and reached forward, grabbing his jaw and pulling his mouth open. Keith made a sound of protest but didn’t pull away.

“You have like, four pointy ones,” Lance remarked. “Barely.”

Keith couldn’t answer, his mouth still held open by Lance, so he reached forward himself. For a second, his thumb brushed against Lance’s lip, and he felt his entire insides try to rearrange themselves. Then his mouth was open, and Keith was squinting right back at him.

“Har ‘oo ointy,” he said, and he and Lance shared a single look before both bursting into laughter, finally letting each other go.

“Let’s keep reading,” Keith said finally, shaking his head and propping the book back open.

Lance laid back down, ignoring the fact that he was closer to Keith than before, his tail pressed up against the side of Keith’s leg. He also ignored the passing time, the change of the currents as the day grew closer to its end.

After all, what was one more chapter?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/jilliancares)  
>  :]


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You have to let me go…” Lance said, still struggling to turn over, but his tail flailed uselessly against the deck, not knowing quite how to maneuver itself without the familiar presence of water surrounding it.
> 
> “We’re gonna be millionaires, Jim!” Rich cajoled, and Lance groaned.

It was the middle of the night. The moon was full and high in the sky, lighting up the water with beautiful patterns as the waves filtered the moonlight down to the ocean floor.

Lance couldn’t sleep. As he always did when he couldn't sleep, he was out for a midnight swim, appreciating the beautiful nighttime scenery of the ocean, full of night-going fish and bioluminescent plants. The floor below him glowed with the presence of all the plants, twinkling similarly to the stars in the sky above.

The whole ocean was peaceful and at rest, an occasional fish darting past in a glimmer of light. Distantly, Lance could hear a strange churning, groaning sound. He squinted around in confusion, looking for the source of the noise.

Whatever it was wasn’t close enough to be seen, but Lance was curious and he couldn’t sleep anyway, so he started swimming in the direction the sound was coming from. It got louder so gradually Lance barely noticed it happening, didn’t notice when it stopped being a distant thrum and started being a close, loud roar. Not until he saw it, anyway.

It was a boat, the engine loud and obnoxious as the rudders thundered against the water, pushing it forward. Lance glared at the hull, annoyed that he’d wasted his previously peaceful night looking for something so horrible. With a huff, he turned around to swim back home, to return before anyone could notice he was gone.

His plan was immediately ruined.

Somehow, upon discovering the boat and swimming close enough to actually make it out, a net had appeared behind him. A giant, thick, looming net, one which Lance briefly pressed against before panic started to close in his throat.

He tried to turn back around, tried to spin around and go around the net, but he could barely maneuver himself with the net pressing up against him, and to his dismay the net had somehow appeared on his other side as well.

“No!” he cried out. “No!”

The net was tugging him, pulling him upwards, dragging him towards the surface even as he tried to fight against it, struggling against the ropes around him. He was panicking, could barely breathe, and he couldn’t make the net stop: it kept rising and rising and rising, pulling, dragging, yanking Lance towards the surface, to the boat.

It hurt when he was pulled above the water, the ropes suddenly pressing against his skin with a new intensity, the gravity pressing him against it increasing tenfold. The ropes were digging into his face, one arm protruding through a hole in the net and another trapped underneath his own torso. His tail was bent unnaturally, rising up over his back and arching over his body painfully. He whimpered, a mixture of pain and fear making its presence known as his gills closed and he readjusted, gasping for air.

He was almost relieved when the net suddenly collapsed, dropping him harshly on the deck of the ship. At least then the net stopped digging into him so painfully, stopped bending his body into shapes it didn’t belong in. A new throbbing started up in his head though — he was pretty sure it’d smacked against the deck when he was dropped, but he couldn’t be sure, too busy panicking to really assess what was happening.

He was kidnapped. He’d been netted. A boat had scooped him up from the ocean and he was out of the water, a fish out of water, probably going to be cooked and eaten for dinner and—

“Holy shit!” someone crowed. Out of the corner of his eye Lance could see a pair of legs, which suddenly jumped into the air, possibly in excitement. “Jim, you gotta come see this!”

Another pair of feet thundered from somewhere else on the boat, and then there were two people, and they were talking loudly and excitedly about Lance, about how they’d caught a mermaid and how much do you think this’ll fetch, Rich?

“Please,” Lance rasped, pushing against the net encasing him. “Let me go.”

“Holy shit,” said the sailor called Jim. “It _talks_!”

“You have to let me go…” Lance said, still struggling to turn over, but his tail flailed uselessly against the deck, not knowing quite how to maneuver itself without the familiar presence of water surrounding it.

“We’re gonna be millionaires, Jim!” Rich cajoled, and Lance groaned. The two men came and grabbed him, ignoring his pleas and protests, and dragged him down a set a stairs, grunting and groaning about how heavy he was. They ditched him in the little cabin beneath the deck, closing the door behind them as they went back upstairs, their footsteps above Lance the only proof of their presence.

Lance tried to concentrate, tried not to go into shock. He’d been kidnapped. He’d been kidnapped by men who clearly didn’t know about the existence of the merfolk, didn’t know that there was a truce, that they weren’t _allowed_  to kidnap Lance. But where were they taking him? What if they killed him? What if their human government didn’t find out that they’d taken Lance and no one intervened?

“Oh my God,” Lance muttered to himself, now struggling to breathe. He knew he could breathe fine above water, had been doing it for weeks now, but this didn’t seem to be a problem with his lungs. It was just that no matter how much oxygen he inhaled, it wasn’t enough. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe!

 _I’m gonna die,_  Lance thought. _Either these men are gonna kill me or I’m gonna suffocate to death, somehow._  What the hell was happening to him?

Lance hated these people. He hated this boat. It was nothing like Keith’s boat. Why weren’t all people like Keith and Pidge? Respectful and not crazy or greedy and—

_That’s it!_

Fumbling for his shell necklace, Lance grabbed the device and fervently whispered, “Hello!?” into it. His lungs had started working again now that he had a plan, now that he could think properly.

The screen appeared before his face, projecting Pidge’s bedroom. Instead of Pidge sitting directly before the screen like usual, she was towards the back of her room, bundled under the blankets on her bed.

“Pidge!” Lance hissed, intent on not being discovered by the sailors. If they knew he had this device they could take it, could squash his only hope. “Pidge, wake up! _Please_  wake up!”

A groan answered him, and the huddled mass on the bed sat up, a glasses-less Pidge squinting towards him.

“Lance?” she said. “I thought this was only for emergencies.”

“This _is_  an emergency! You have to help me!” Lance whispered. “There was this boat, and these men, and they took me, and I’m /cold/, and —“

“Woah, woah, woah, _slow down_ ,” Pidge instructed, having stood up and settled herself in her desk, wearing her glasses again. “Men took you?”

“They netted me,” Lance whimpered. It was all coming back to him again, the pain of the net digging into his skin, how his back and tail were still aching from being positioned so wrongly, how his head was _throbbing_ , the bright light of the screen making his eyes and brain ache.

“Lance, I need you to stay calm,” Pidge instructed. “Okay? Can you do that for me?”

Lance nodded, feeling his lip quiver. He was scared.

“Just stay calm. I’m gonna get Keith and we’ll come and find you. I promise. Okay?”

“Okay,” Lance whispered. Pidge looked serious, determined. She looked like she hadn’t been unexpectedly woken two minutes ago.

“I’ll see you soon.”

—

One second, Keith was sleeping peacefully, and the next the floorboard next to his bed was creaking and he was wide awake, having jumped out of bed and pinned the intruder against it with a knife to their throat.

“Holy shit, you maniac! It’s me!”

“Pidge?” Keith said incredulously, his voice still thick and scratchy with sleep. He released her, stepping back and letting his arm relax, knife held by his side. “Did you climb through my window?”

“I _wouldn’t have_  if I’d known you were going to try to kill me!”

“I thought you were an intruder,” Keith said defensively. Pidge was standing and facing him again, glaring now. “Seriously, what’s up?”

“I snuck in here ‘cause I didn’t want to wake Shiro,” Pidge explained. “We’re gonna have to steal his boat.”

Keith crossed his arms. “No way. Shiro’s already mad enough at me as it is. He keeps pestering me about where I go every day — he doesn’t believe I’m with friends.”

“Well, you don’t have very many.”

“Neither do you! Shut up.”

“We need his boat, Keith. Apparently some fishermen caught Lance — he called me in a panic. He looked really scared.”

Keith felt his stomach drop out of his body. Fishermen had caught Lance? How? Why had he even been near their boat in the middle of the night anyway? Uneasy, Keith wondered if Lance had mistaken their boat for Keith’s. What if it was Keith’s fault for getting him to trust people and boats in the first place?

“You’re right,” Keith whispered. “I’ll go get the keys. You head down to the boat, I’ll meet you there.” Pidge nodded, already turning back towards his window, still open from where she’d snuck in. She was carrying a bookbag, probably full of supplies Keith wouldn’t even have thought to bring. He quickly got dressed, strapping his belt on and shoving his knife into the hilt attached to his belt. Better safe than sorry, if he was going to end up threatening a few sailors.

Sneaking into Shiro’s room was a whole other ordeal. Keith knew Shiro was keeping the keys with him at all times. It was a show of how little he trusted Keith. They’d never fought this long before, and part of Keith was aching to come clean and make up with his brother, to tell him all about Lance and gush to him about how he really felt, about how Lance was the sweetest, most genuine person (creature?) he’d ever met, and that he was happier than he usually was because of him.

He hadn’t even realized he’d been lacking in happiness; he’d thought he’d been fine, spending his days with Shiro or Pidge or at work, letting time drag past him without caring. Maybe it’d been like that since his dad had died. All Keith knew was now that he was experiencing life differently, felt like he was moving with time rather than against it, he didn’t want things to go back to how they were. He didn’t want to lose Lance.

But he couldn’t tell Shiro. No doubt Shiro would reprimand him, would tell him he was an idiot and making a huge mistake, putting his life in danger. He would lecture him and monitor him even more than he was doing now. He’d go all Big Brother Mode, forgetting that Keith wasn’t a little kid anymore, that he was older than Shiro had been when they’d lost their dad.

Keith hated fighting with Shiro, but it was just going to have to stay that way. Shiro was going to have to forgive him and learn to trust him again without Keith coming clean about Lance. There was just no way that would go smoothly.

So he would continue to lie to Shiro. He would sneak into his room and steal the keys, knowing Shiro was a light sleeper.

He tiptoed past his dad’s room — untouched, unopened since his dad died, unless Shiro had gone in there at some point without Keith knowing — and continued to Shiro’s room. He opened the door slowly, twisted the knob as quietly as he could and creeping alongside the wall towards Shiro’s bed, trying not to let any of the floorboards creak under his feet.

Shiro hadn’t always been a light sleeper. Keith had vague memories of trying to wake him up when he was little, trying to drag Shiro out of bed to play with him or to walk him to the beach first thing in the morning. Ever since the accident, though, Shiro slept as light as a feather. It was a curse, Keith thought. That Shiro couldn’t sleep through a single storm, had to be awake and aware when they wracked the skies above their house, sounding oh so similar to the one he’d lost his arm in.

Keith was quiet, though. He’d gotten great at it in the months after the accident, when Shiro had barely been able to sleep at all. Whenever he’d slept, it’d been in places he hadn’t intended to sleep — bent over the counter, sitting against a door, in front of the tv — and Keith had vowed never to wake him when he was getting the precious sleep he needed.

Now, it was especially helpful that Keith had that skill, as he tiptoed along Shiro’s bed, glancing at him as he moved towards his bedside table. His arm was removed, laying on his desk and making Shiro look somewhat incomplete in his bed. He looked younger in sleep, his scar less prominent, his expression relaxed. Keith frowned. He really, really missed not fighting with his brother.

Still, now wasn’t the time to dwell. He finally grabbed the keys off Shiro’s bedside table, moving as slowly as possible so as not to make them jangle. Then he was off scot-free, easing back through the door and down the stairs, carefully closing and locking the front door behind him.

He ran the rest of the way to the pier, knowing he’d already wasted time having to be quiet and careful. For every minute, every second Keith took, Lance had to suffer. Lance had to be alone, scared and in danger.

With that thought in mind, Keith pushed himself to go even faster, and he reached the pier faster than he could ever remember getting there before. Pidge was standing on the boat, having already untied most of the ropes and adjusted some of the easier things to adjust.

“Got ‘em!” Keith panted, jumping from the gangplank onto the boat. He stumbled to a stop, gasping for breath, and Pidge snatched the keys out of his hand, hurrying into the cabin to start the engine. It rumbled to life, the motor kicking in, and then they were moving forward, away from the docks and into the open water.

“Do we even have any idea where he is?” Keith demanded, ducking his head into the cabin to look at Pidge. She was looking at her phone, tapping away at the device.

“Yes,” she said. “I can use his half of the communication device to track him.”

With that, she was setting her phone on the table before her and orienting herself before the wheel. “We’re headed due west,” she informed, glancing from her phone to the horizon again. “And we’re in luck — the wind’s with us.”

What wasn’t lucky was the fact that the sun was already on the horizon. Being abruptly woken, Keith had assumed it was the middle of the night, but now he was becoming very aware that it was probably closer to six or seven in the morning. This meant that Shiro would be waking up soon, but he shoved this worry from his mind: he had more important things to deal with. Namely, the sails.

Pidge had instructed (begged) him to figure out how to put up the sails again. Their motor was working fine, but so was that of the boat they were after, which was already a pretty long ways from them.

Having the sails up would increase their speed greatly, and they might just be able to catch up to the other boat before Lance died from a panic attack or something. He couldn’t imagine anything worse than being trapped, unable to move, unable to escape.

They sailed for an hour, the first ten minutes spent with Keith struggling to raise the sails and Pidge obsessively checking her phone, making sure they were headed in the right direction. After Keith managed to somehow be successful with the sails, the wind filling them and pushing them through the water even faster, he took to pacing. He paced all over the boat, from bow to stern and back again. Pidge had snapped at him a few times but he couldn’t help himself, he needed to work out his energy somehow.

All of Keith’s insides attempted to rearrange themselves the second he laid eyes on the ship. When he first saw it, it was just a spec on the horizon. The closer they got, the more antsy Keith grew, until he was gripping the railing at the front of the boat and tapping his foot incessantly, having to talk himself down from diving into the water and swimming the rest of the way to the other boat as fast as he could.

The other boat didn’t have its sails up, wasn’t going very fast without them, so it seemed the other sailors weren’t in any sort of hurry. Either that or they were complete idiots, as they did nothing about Keith’s boat gaining on them, pulling up beside them.

Pidge joined Keith on the deck, leaning against the railing as they finally leveled with the other boat. “Hey!” she called, gathering the attention of the two men on board, both of them gesturing a lot as they spoke together. They turned at Pidge’s shout, and one of them waved.

“Ahoy, Sailor!” he said, and Pidge made a groaning sound low in her throat. Her signature, Annoyed Groan. Already, she hated these men — Keith could tell.

“Waters are mighty fine today, aren’t they?” the other sailor said jovially, and Pidge made an agreeing kind of sound. Just then, Keith realized the two sailors weren’t the only ones on the deck.

Pidge had explained during their boat ride that Lance had appeared to be in the cabin when he’d called her for help. This whole time Keith had been trying to devise a plan as to how he was going to get over there and into their cabin, but Lance wasn’t even _in_  the cabin. No, he was laying on the deck, blending in with the other piles of ropes because of how covered in them he was. He was hopelessly tangled, and dishearteningly, he seemed to be having trouble breathing, his chest shuddering up and down as he vaguely attempted to pull at the ropes surrounding him.

“Oh my God, Pidge,” Keith whispered, eyes locked on Lance’s pitiful form. “He’s right there.”

Pidge shuddered in a breath. “Oh no…” she said. “I think he’s dehydrated. I’ve been doing some research — just for fun, nothing serious, you know — because how can anything live without _drinking water_? But I think Lance _does_  need water, not just to swim in, but —”

“The _point_ , Pidge,” Keith hissed.

“He absorbs water through his tail,” Pidge concluded. “And he hasn’t been in the water for hours.”

Grinding his teeth, Keith finally cleared his throat, raising his voice to be heard by the other sailors. “You’ll want to throw that one back,” he said, gesturing towards Lance with a nod at the other sailors, who scoffed. “He’s more trouble than he’s worth.”

“It’s worth all the trouble,” one of the sailors said, crossing his arms and spitting into the ocean — gross. “You just want us to toss it back so you can catch it for yourselves!”

“Not true,” Keith said. He picked at his nail, attempting to seem disinterested when his entire body was screaming at him to drop plank and charge onto their boat. He wanted to throw them both overboard, wanted to leave them to fend for themselves in the endless ocean. “My father caught one of them, once. Years ago.”

“Oh yeah?” the other sailor scoffed. “And then what?”

“I don’t know,” Keith said, finally returning his hand to his side and looking the two men in the face. “I haven’t seen him since.”

There was a moment of silence, the two strangers looking wary and contemplative, before one of them shook his head. “Don’t matter to us,” he said. “We can handle this on our own. Can’t even imagine the price for something like this. Wonder if it’d taste good.”

And that, of course, was the breaking point for Keith. He wasted no time, not even bothering to grab a gang plank. He just climbed onto the railing of his boat, teetered there for a second too long, and lunging forward, barely making it to the other boat. His hands caught on the lowest rung of the railing and his body slammed into the side of the boat. He grunted as he pulled himself up. The two men were too surprised to kick him off, and Keith managed to swing himself onto the deck before they could do anything to get rid of him.

“Wha — you… _get off our boat!_ “

Keith ignored the man, whipping his knife out of its sheath instead.

“Oh dammit Jim, he’s got a knife!”

Jim’s eyes widened, and he glanced towards the other man. As one, they sprinted into the cabin, slamming the door shut behind them. For a moment, Keith just stood there, mouth gaping and adrenaline thrumming through his body, ready for a fight. And then everything resumed. He stepped forward and tied the cabin door shut with one of the many, many excess lengths of rope, and then he was onto Lance, the whole while Pidge chanting, “Hurry, hurry hurry,” from the other boat.

“Lance,” Keith said, ducking down by Lance’s side and touching his arm. “Lance, can you hear me? Are you okay?”

“Keith,” Lance whimpered. His lips were turned into a frown and his eyes momentarily fluttered open, closed again before Keith could really even take in their color.

“I’m gonna cut you out of this net, okay? Don’t freak out.”

Lance made a noise of consent, and then Keith was quickly but carefully freeing him, sawing his knife through pieces of the net until he’d made a hole big enough to release Lance. He dragged the ropes off Lance, who was covered in red lines from where they’d been digging into his skin, and ducked down, wrapping his arms under Lance’s armpits.

“Gonna drag you,” he warned. “Can you swim?”

“Dunno,” Lance muttered. “Head hurts.”

“What about just to my boat?” Keith offered. “If I drop you in the water, can you swim over to my boat?”

“Yes,” Lance said, with the barest of nods. “Yeah, I think I can do that.” His voice sounded scratchy, his throat dry, and he was still panting. His cheeks were red.

As carefully as he could manage, Keith dragged Lance to the side of the boat. He was heavier than Keith would’ve expected, but then again his tail was giant. He maneuvered Lance into the water as gently as he could, holding onto his hands as he lowered him in. Lance’s panting slowed as his tail splashed through the water below him, as his eyes fluttered open and he looked just a little bit revitalized.

“To my boat,” Keith reminded, pointing behind Lance. “Swim to my boat.”

Lance did just that, blinking with understanding. He didn’t even bother to go underwater, just clinging to the side of the horrible boat before carefully edging towards Keith’s, where he then clung to the side ladder, head resting against one of the lower metal rungs.

Keith returned to his boat in the more conventional way, using the gang plank Pidge had lowered for him, and by the time he was back Pidge was already crouched above the ladder, talking to Lance quietly and asking him questions, to which he nodded or shook his head. Keith stood a careful distance from Pidge, arms crossed and anxiety beating in his chest.

Finally, Pidge stood, and she came straight to Keith.

“He’s going to be fine,” she informed. Keith’s entire body relaxed, his stiffness vaporizing, his shoulders falling down from his ears, his fingers unclenching from his fists. He hadn’t even realized he’d been standing so stiffly, hadn’t realized he’d still been so worried, until Pidge had taken that worry away.

“He’s super dehydrated and tired because of it,” Pidge informed, glancing over at Lance as she did. He was still clinging to the ladder, though he was looking better by the minute, finally breathing normally again. “By the sounds of it, he had a few pretty bad panic attacks while he was held captive today. And he might have a concussion, too.”

“I’m gonna kill those guys,” Keith said lowly, hand venturing to the knife on his belt, and Pidge gave him a stern look.

“We won’t be killing anybody,” she said, and Keith grunted in acknowledgement. “We’re going to take care of Lance and drive him closer to his colony. He shouldn’t have to swim all that way.”

“You’re right,” Keith said immediately. He clenched his jaw, looking towards Lance once more. In the end, he coaxed Pidge into sailing them back, opting to sit above the ladder to be closer to Lance, offering conversation as Lance slowly came back to it.

By the time they got to the waters where Lance’s colony was located, Lance was still feeling a bit off. He said that people would notice he was acting strangely if he returned just then, so Pidge brought them to their little cavern instead, Lance assuring them he could swim into the cave just fine while they came on land.

Keith couldn’t shake his worry for Lance. He didn’t want to have to leave his side, wanted to be with him at all times and keep something like this from ever happening to him again. Similarly, he wanted to beat those idiot sailors into a pulp for treating Lance like such shit.

In the cavern, Lance ended up napping at the bottom of the tide pool, his form small and peaceful from what Keith could see of him. While Lance slept, Keith paced, crossing and uncrossing his arms uneasily all the while. He tried to recall as much as he could from Harry Potter, determined to tell Lance a story he would love when he finally woke up.

Pidge noticed his unease — not a tribute to her ingeniousness, by the way, it was just pretty obvious — and she told him to stay and keep watch over Lance while she went and caught him a few fish.

“He might be too tired to catch some on his own when he wakes up, and eating something will be good for him.”

This had sounded like a good enough idea to Keith, so he’d left Pidge to go fishing on his boat while he’d continued to pace. A few times, his thoughts had attempted to wander to Shiro, to what his brother would do and say when Keith finally came back, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to be worried about that. Not after what had happened to Lance. Not when he didn’t regret what he’d done for a single second.

Eventually, Keith huffed out a giant breath and yanked off his shoes, shoving the legs of his pants up over his knees. Lance was always begging him to get in the water for some unknown reason, and Keith was always refusing. There were a few key reasons for this, such as: he didn’t want to get his clothes wet, he’d never really liked swimming in the first place, and he kind of enjoyed keeping Lance hanging.

He didn’t know why, but there was something really enjoyable about controlling something that Lance for some reason desperately wanted. He was constantly trying to get Keith to come into the water with him, whether it be with bribes or trickery, and Keith was holding onto his leverage for as long as he could.

Putting his legs in didn’t count, Keith decided. It certainly wasn’t the same as swimming, but it would probably make Lance happy all the same, and so he would do it. Especially after the traumatic day Lance had had.

It wasn’t much longer before Lance awoke. Keith couldn’t tell if it was because he’d actually slept enough or if he could feel Keith’s legs kicking idly through the water, but Keith knew the moment he was awake because he stormed up and grabbed Keith’s ankles, giving him a heart attack.

“You’re in the water!” he cheered, fingers tight around Keith’s ankles and face grinning, just above Keith’s knees.

“Only my feet are,” Keith pointed out, and Lance scoffed. His hands skimmed up Keith’s legs, nails absently scratching against the back of his calves, and Keith shivered all over.

“More than your feet,” Lance pointed out. “Almost up to your knees.”

“What can I say?” Keith said, sighing dramatically. “The sound of absolute quiet makes me want to soak my feet. But now that it’s not quiet anymore…” he started to pull his legs away, out of the water, and Lance gripped them and yanked them back down.

“Rude, Keith,” he said sternly, glaring at him from in between his legs. “Show the recently kidnapped mermaid some respect.”

Keith laughed, and then he grew serious, thoughts of Lance’s kidnapping invading his mind. God, it’d sucked seeing him like that, all panicked and scared when he was usually loud and playful.

“That was scary,” he said, his eyes having dropped to the water in between them. He fought to drag them back up, finding Lance looking at him just as intently.

“You’re telling me,” he joked, cracking a smile. It was amazing how he could do that — bounce back so easily, take everything so lightly. Keith almost believed he really was fine. He was still holding onto Keith’s ankles, and Keith reached down without looking, grabbing one of Lance’s hands and intertwining their fingers.

Lance squeezed his hand, as if Keith were the one that needed to be comforted. “I need to start carrying one of those,” Lance said, gesturing towards Keith’s belt. Without warning, he reached forward with his other hand, leaning over Keith and soaking his clothes — thanks for that, Lance — and pulled his knife out of its sheath. Lance twisted it back and forth, looking at his reflection in the blade.

“Careful with that,” Keith warned, watching warily as Lance took to stabbing the surface of the water. It was weird that Keith found that cute, right? “It’s pretty sharp.”

“You’re pretty sharp,” Lance answered immediately, almost absentmindedly. And then he turned to Keith and winked, big and exaggerated and so _Lance_. Keith snorted, pulling Lance closer with their still joined hand and reaching across him to grab the knife from his other.

“If I let you stab yourself Pidge’ll never forgive me.” He wiped the blade dry on one of the few dry patches on his pants before tucking it back into his belt.

“I’ll stab anyone who refuses to forgive you,” Lance said, grinning now. He tugged on Keith’s hand then, his tail pushing him further into the tide pool, and Keith was forced to lean forward with him. “Swim with me, Keith,” he said. “You know you want to.”

“Mmm. No thanks.” Keith pulled Lance back, and Lance came willingly. He folded his arms on Keith’s knees and propped his chin on them, like he normally did to the edge of tide pool.

They stayed like that while they waited for Pidge to return, Lance’s hand occasionally moving back and forth over Keith’s leg. Keith barely noticed, but at some point he’d hooked his feet around Lance, just above his waist.

When Pidge finally returned with the fish, Lance was ecstatic. He sung her praise and declared that he would write ballads of her greatness, all while devouring the freshly caught fish. Turned out he really was starving, though despite this he offered to share several times, which Keith and Pidge continually declined.

“It’s weird,” Lance said, while ripping into a fish like it was a chicken wing. “I’ve never eaten above water before.”

This immediately gained Pidge’s interest, and then they got to talking, and Keith kept his legs in the water, kicking them gently. Lance stayed closed to him, occasionally leaning against his legs or grabbing his ankles without really seeming to notice. All in all, it was a long while before he finally returned home, and he couldn’t really muster up any regret for shoving Shiro’s impending anger to the back-burner.

—

Allura didn’t often meet with the humans. There was of course Observation Day, which was swiftly approaching, where the government humans came and observed their colony, continuing their agreement of peace and protection. Other than that, communication depended on emergencies. Allura had a way to contact the humans if she had need of doing so, and the humans could similarly contact her, though both were extremely rare.

It was because of this rarity that she was so surprised when Coran told her of the communication happening. There wasn’t time to feel surprised, she just had to go to the communication chamber, where the humans would then be projected on a large screen via a device they’d gifted the colony.

“Princess Allura,” a familiar government official greeted. He was one of the older ones of his kind. “Greetings.”

“And to you as well, sir. To what do I owe the honor?”

“We just thought to warn you of recent developments. Two sailors were making quite a ruckus, going about the docks and shouting about how mermaids were real, how they’d caught one.” Allura felt her eyes widen, mentally trying to calculate if any of her colony had been reported missing, when someone could have possibly been taking, how their absence could have been missed. “They didn’t have one of your people with them, however. They claim the mermaid escaped, so I assume whoever it was is already back with your colony. This all occurred two days ago.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” Allura said, speaking to herself more than the official. “None of my people have spoken of this event. I can’t imagine who would possibly keep this to themselves…” she trailed off, her eyes squinting as her brain started to whir. “In any case, thank you for letting me know,” she said, looking up again and nodding at the man.

They concluded their communications with rather formal goodbyes and then Allura was fuming in private, wondering if it could possibly be who she thought it was.

Lance had been acting out of the ordinary recently. He was keeping secrets, she could tell, and it was only a matter of time until she figured out what was going on with him. But why wouldn’t he tell her about kidnapped? Why wouldn’t he tell _anyone_?

Deciding she had to get to the bottom of this, Allura asked Coran to go and find Lance. She had a few questions to ask him.

She retreated into the throne room to wait for Lance’s arrival. It didn’t take him long; he was a fast swimmer and Coran was always efficient in fetching people for her. She greeted him when he entered the throne room. “Lance.”

“Allura, my dude,” Lance said, shooting a pair of finger guns her way. “My Princess, what’s up?”

“I had a meeting with he humans today,” she began, and Lance’s expression stayed stoic. He raised his eyebrows curiously.

“Oh, really?” he said. “That sounds fun. Is that why you called me here?”

“Actually, yes.”

Lance’s eyebrow twitched.

“Apparently one of our own was kidnapped by a pair of incessant sailors.”

“Oh my God,” Lance breathed. “Are they okay?”

Allura let the silence drag out between them. “I was hoping you could tell me that,” she finally said. Lance’s expression shuttered shut. It was his biggest tell when lying — he became _too_  expressionless.

“What do you mean?” Lance answered. “Do I know them?”

Allura sighed. She was tired of this. She was tired of Lance lying to her, of her long-time friend thinking he had to keep things from her. “It was you, Lance,” she said. “I know it was. Why didn’t you tell me?”

For a moment, Lance stayed still, expressionless, looking as if he might deny it — and then he deflated. “Yes, it was me, all right? I was embarrassed. I didn’t want anyone to know I’d been captured by a couple of dumb humans.”

“Lance —”

“And _yes_ , that’s what’s been bothering me lately. You finally got me.”

Allura cocked her head, gears turning in her brain. “That’s what’s been bothering you?” she said. “All these past weeks?”

“Yes,” Lance said assuredly. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner.”

_They claim the mermaid escaped, so I assume whoever it was is already back with your colony. This all occurred two days ago._

“Well. I’m glad you’re telling me now.”

Lance bowed his head. “Will that be all, Princess?”

“Yes,” Allura said, still watching him intently. He was lying to her. She knew he was lying to her — but what about? “Just — know you can tell me anything, okay?”

“Of course,” he said seriously. And then his face split into a grin. “Like how if I was a fish, you’d be _reeling me in_.”

“Ugh. Goodbye Lance.”

“Catch you later, Princess.” He winked, and then he was gone.

—

It was time to pull out the big guns.

Hunk had been ignoring him ever since he’d spoken to Allura only to find out that Lance had been captured by humans and never told him about it. He’d been angry and worried and now he was giving him the silent treatment, and Lance was sick of it.

He didn’t have to share every minuscule part of his life, okay? And sure, getting captured by a pair of humans wasn’t _too_  minuscule, but it was still Lance’s life.

Oh God, Lance really was a horrible friend, wasn’t he? It was just that he hadn’t wanted Hunk to worry about him. He hadn’t wanted to make him scared. He’d just wanted to shove it all in the past and forget it even happened — his time on that stupid boat wasn’t something he wanted to relive.

Anyway, Hunk was super committed to this whole “ignoring Lance” to “prove a point” thing. Lance had already resorted to begging and non-stop pestering in an attempt to get him to stop ignoring Lance. He’d even _apologized_! Hunk had ignored his apology, which basically meant he was fucked for all eternity.

Except he wasn’t, because he was bringing out the big guns.

“You were right.”

This made Hunk pause. He was currently on hunting duty, a spear in hand and a bag of fish over his shoulder. Lance wasn’t technically supposed to be on hunting duty with him, but he’d gotten pretty dedicated to following him around everywhere, so here he was.

Hunk didn’t say anything, but Lance could tell he was listening. He’d been tuning Lance out for a while now, he was pretty sure, but there was something about the words “you were right” that really caught his attention.

Finally, Hunk huffed, spinning around to cross his arms and confront Lance properly. “You hate admitting I was right,” he said, eyeing Lance suspiciously. “You really think so? That you should have told me about being kidnapped right away?”

“Oh, that? I mean — I guess.”

Hunk glared, rolling his eyes before turning away from Lance again, on the search for more fish.

“No, wait! Hunk, listen!” Lance begged. He came up and clung to Hunk, which was a pretty dangerous option when the person you were clinging to was holding a super pointy spear (and also looking kind of murderous). “I definitely should’ve told you about that, but I was actually talking about something else. That you were right about.”

“I’m right about a lot of things Lance, you’re gonna have to narrow it down.”

Ugh, this bastard. He was going to make Lance say it. “You were right about Keith,” he said. “And you were right about the necklace. I wasn’t just giving it to him to be nice… I really like him.”

Hunk whirled around, shaking Lance off in doing so, and looked at him with eyes blazing in excitement. “Aha!” he exclaimed. “I knew it! I knew I was right!”

“Yep.”

“You should just listen to everything I say always.”

“Totally.”

“This is all gonna blow up in your face.”

“Uh-huh — wait, no it isn’t! Hunk!”

“I’m just saying,” Hunk said innocently, and Lance glowered at him. “Oh come on! Keith’s a _human_ , dude. It just can’t work out.”

“Yes it can,” Lance insisted stubbornly, before kind of deflating. “If there was anything to work out, anyway. I don’t even know if he likes me back.”

For a moment, Hunk looked pained, as if he was trying not to say or do something, and then he sighed heavily. “I’m pretty sure he likes you back, Lance. I mean, he gave you that bracelet, didn’t he?” He gestured at the chain around Lance’s wrist as he said this. The chain that Lance often absentmindedly rubbed. The chain that really hadn’t rusted even though Lance had kind of expected it to despite Keith saying it wouldn’t.

But Lance had never told Hunk the bracelet was a gift from Keith! In fact, he’d shrugged off Hunk’s questions about it all together, claiming he’d just found it and that it was no big deal Hunk, come on. Of course Hunk had somehow found out anyway. He was such a genius, that guy. But… “That doesn’t mean anything,” Lance said stiffly. “He was just being nice, since I gave him a present first.”

“Mhmm. And he came and saved you from being kidnapped?”

“Pidge was there too. And he’d have done that for you too, Hunk,” Lance insisted.

“Yeah, I’m sure he would have. But would he have stayed with me in that cavern the whole time? And would he read me stories if I was the one who loved fairytales?”

“I’m sure he wou —”

“No, he wouldn’t,” Hunk said finitely. “Because Keith just likes me as a friend, but he likes you as something more.”

Lance couldn’t stop the giddy sensation building up inside him. He was grinning, his eyes wide with excitement as Hunk watched him, seeming almost disappointed in himself.

“I really hope you’re right, Hunk.”

“I still think you shouldn’t do anything about it,” Hunk warned. “You’ll just end up getting hurt.”

“Not if I’m careful,” Lance said. After that, he actually helped Hunk with his hunt instead of impeding him, though his mind wandered the whole time, filled with thoughts of Keith and when he would see him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [my tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/jilliancares)  
>  :]


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So...” Shiro said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere among super interested. “What’s his name?”
> 
> “Shiro.”
> 
> “What!? My brother’s never had a crush before — is it so bad I’m interested?”
> 
> “Yes.”

Lance sighed heartily, not for the first time, in an attempt to get Hunk’s attention. Hunk had grown very adept at ignoring Lance’s dramatics over the years. While this might make it seem like he’d managed to become exceptionally skilled at ignoring Lance, it really just meant that _Lance_  had become exceptionally skilled at pestering Hunk. He could get pretty creative when he really needed to.

He let himself float belly-up, arms flung out to the side and head tilted back as he sighed again, louder and even more dramatically. Bubbles plumed up all around him, racing towards the surface far above them.

“All right _fine_. I’ll bite. What’s wrong?”

“Keith’s dead.”

“Keith is not dead.”

“He might as well be,” Lance pouted, flipping over to force the full extent of his pout upon Hunk’s eyes. Hunk looked exactly zero-percent pitying, and Lance had been expecting at least a solid 80% of pitiful Hunk. This was outrageous.

“What are you even talking about?”

“It’s been almost a week since I’ve seen him,” Lance said. “AKA, almost a week since he saved me from the sailors. _AKA_ , he’s avoiding me because I’m weak and an embarrassment because I let stupid sailors capture me.”

“First of all, you didn’t let them — they had a giant net and you just happen to be insufferably curious,” Hunk said, and Lance pursed his lips further, extending the volume of his pout. “Second, there’s no way he thinks you’re weak. He likes you; he wouldn’t avoid you. Have you even asked Pidge? Didn’t you see her the other day?”

“Yeah,” Lance muttered. “But I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to seem desperate.”

“All right. You realize you’re being ridiculous right?”

“Hunk, I need support from my best friend, not insults.”

“You could always call Pidge and ask her. I’m sure Keith has a good reason for not visiting the cavern recently.”

“Yeah, like the fact that he hates my guts and wants nothing to do with me ever again.”

Hunk nodded slowly — not in support, but as if his head was moving through his sheer amount of disbelief. “Okay,” he said. “I can see you’re beyond reason. I’m gonna go back to ignoring you now.”

Hunk turned away, and Lance flipped back over, looking at the surface dancing so far above him. It’d used to seem tantalizing, used to seem so unreachable, a place he’d gone rarely, only on occasion. Now, it felt completely familiar to him. He was accustomed to closing his gills and breathing solely through his mouth and nose; used to the feeling of air on his skin, sun on his tail. He liked the surface. He liked what the surface stood for, in his mind: Keith and Pidge, his friends who lived there. He liked being with them, liked that he’d even had the chance to become friends with them.

What he _didn’t_  like was the fact that he hadn’t seen Keith in a week, especially after having the revelation that he was very much trying to court the guy. _Especially_  especially since Hunk thought he returned Lance’s feelings! If he liked Lance so much, why hadn’t he visited him all week? Lance was going to go insane if he kept dwelling on it like this, and Hunk was no help. He was too busy doing boring chores and calling Lance “beyond reason”.

With a final huff, Lance stared at the dancing image of the ocean’s surface, wondering what was keeping Keith up there.

—

“No.”

Keith cursed, freezing where he stood half-out the window with a bag flung over his shoulder. How the hell was Shiro so good at finding him? Or was Keith just that bad at escaping?

Glaring so hard he risked his eyebrows becoming permanently lowered, Keith flung himself back through the window, letting his bag drop to the ground as if he didn’t even care he’d been caught. He crossed his arms, gaze concentrated somewhere above Shiro’s left shoulder.

“Keith, what the hell is going on?”

The last week, Keith had been trying to sneak out of the house without success. Shiro had grounded him, which was something that had never happened before and something Keith wasn’t taking well to. He wasn’t used to being controlled. He hadn’t had a parent around since he was nine years old, and Shiro had always been super lenient with him. This new, strangely controlling Shiro was grating on his nerves, threatening to make him go insane.

All Keith was allowed to do was go to work, and Shiro had printed out a copy of his schedule to be sure Keith wasn’t lying about having a shift. And it didn’t help that Shiro could easily work from home, seeing as the majority of his work took place online anyway (when it wasn’t in the water, anyway).

“I’m just trying to go out.”

“You’re _grounded_.”

“You’re not my dad, Shiro! I can make my own choices. You don’t need to control me.”

“Clearly, I do,” Shiro scoffed, gesturing towards the still open and nearly-climbed-through window. “I don’t know what has gotten into you, taking the boat out, lying to me…”

Brain whirring, Keith decided it was time to give Shiro _something_. To give him a taste of the truth so that he might finally back off. “I met someone,” he said, voice gruff with uncomfortableness. He watched as Shiro’s eyes widened. “I really like him and we’ve been hanging out lately.” God, every word felt like it was choking Keith. He hated talking about personal things, hated the excited look growing on Shiro’s face. But he needed more, just a bit more, to make it believable… “I took the boat out to impress him, okay? I’m sorry.” _Lie_.

“Keith,” Shiro said softly, except a smile was working its way through his disappointed exterior. “Why didn’t you just tell me that?”

Grinding his teeth, Keith looked away, trying to ignore the growing red on his cheeks. “Would that really have changed your mind on anything?”

“Well... I might’ve been a bit more understanding. It definitely makes more sense that you’re acting so differently for a boy than for an unnamed group of friends.” Shiro said this while smirking, and Keith huffed, wishing he could just be out of this situation already. He should’ve just accepted his grounded fate. Talking boys with his brother was excruciating.

“Gee, thanks,” Keith said blandly, verging on being insulted.

“ _So_...” Shiro said, aiming for casual and landing somewhere among _super interested_. “What’s his name?”

“ _Shiro_.”

“What!? My brother’s never had a crush before — is it so bad I’m interested?”

“ _Yes_.” Shiro just continued to stare at him, all earlier anger and disappointment replaced with an eager giddiness he wasn’t used to seeing on his brother. “Oh my God, if I tell you his name will you stop bugging me?”

“Yes,” Shiro said immediately. And then added, “For now.”

Keith decided this was as good as it was gonna get. “His name is Lance.”

Shiro gasped. Keith rolled his eyes so hard it hurt. “I’m going to my room.”

“Keith, wait.”

“Nope. You said you’d stop bugging me.”

“I just — I think you should go meet him. You know. If that’s what you were going to do.”

Keith paused, halfway across the room and with his bag dragging on the floor behind him. Expressionlessly, he turned slowly to face Shiro, trying to figure out if this was somehow a trick.

“Are you serious?”

Shiro nodded. “I don’t like fighting with you. And I don’t like trying to control you — I know you’re old enough to make your own decisions.”

Carefully, Keith slung his backpack back over his shoulders, letting its familiar weight situate itself between his shoulder-blades. “Okay,” he said, still feeling vaguely suspicious. He started walking towards the front door, eyebrows furrowed and shoulders hunched, prepared to have his budding hopes crushed all over again. He’d so nearly made it out the window this time. The thought of walking out the front door — and with permission, no less — didn’t seem to want to click in his mind.

“And Keith?”

 _Here it comes,_  Keith thought. _The ultimatum. The string attached._  “If Lance is really a good guy, you won’t need to impress him with a boat. He’ll like you just for being you.”

Keith, who’d only just recovered from the red-faced extravaganza he’d just experienced, went back for round two. “Okay.”

Finally, he yanked open the front door and took a merciful step into the fresh air. Escape. “Also —”

Keith groaned, tired of the interrogation and embarrassment. “ _What_ , Shiro?” He turned back to look at him, glaring over his shoulder. Shiro smirked.

“Just wondering if you’d kissed him yet.”

“Ugh!” Keith marched furiously down the front stoop, cutting through the grass to disappear behind Pidge’s house and make his way out onto the forested part of the island, where he could then access the cavern.

“Keith? _Keith_! Have you kissed him?!”

Keith resoundingly ignored him, escaping from view of his home’s front door and breathing a sigh of relief as he did. He was grateful that he wasn’t grounded anymore, that Shiro would get off his back and kind of understand why he never wanted to be home anymore, but he didn’t quite know if he could take the consequences. The teasing. The pestering. The questions about _Lance_.

Oh God, what had he gotten himself into?

—

Honestly, Lance should’ve been paying more attention. He’d grown lax in carefully planning his trips to the cavern. It just stopped feeling so risky when it was something he got away with so often, plus there was the fact that he’d totally gotten Allura off his tail, what with the spectacular lie he’d told her about being captured being the reason he’d been acting off lately. It just didn’t seem like there was anything to worry about, and so he’d been lazily making his way towards the cavern, twisting through towering stalks of seaweed and dragging his fingers through the sand whenever he was swimming low enough.

Part of the reason for his unhurried pace was that he wasn’t really expecting anything of it — Keith hadn’t been in the cavern for a week now and Pidge usually informed Lance of when she’d next be able to make it. He was only going because he was bored and Hunk was busy and maybe if he just hoped hard enough Keith would show up again.

It was also probably thanks to this unhurried pace that he didn’t lead Allura directly towards the place he never wanted her to find.

He caught a glimpse of her when he was gliding up one of the stalks of seaweed, letting the plant trail against his belly and feel good against his skin. A flash of pink caught his eye and he was spinning, gaping as he saw Allura, looking guilty and caught-out.

“Allura,” Lance said, surprise leaking out of his voice. “Are you… following me?”

Just like that, the guilt melted from her expression and it was hardening, angry bubbles drifting up from her gills. “I wouldn’t have to if you’d stop lying to me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Lance said. “And also, friends don’t _stalk each other_.”

“I’m not stalking a friend,” Allura said matter of factly. “I’m investigating a citizen of my colony.”

Lance felt his mouth fall open as hurt filled his chest, aching with his every heartbeat. Allura must’ve seen the hurt on his face, as her indignant expression fell and she seemed to really absorb her own words, eyes widening as she did.

“Wait, Lance, I didn’t mean —”

“Whatever,” Lance said, cutting her off. He turned back around, already devising a new path in his mind, once which would take twists and turns and make his already meandering journey seem destination-less, just a pleasant, purposeless swim.

“ _Lance_.”

Lance spoke without turning around to look at her. “Follow me if you want, Princess. I’ve never done anything to endanger our colony, and frankly, I don’t care what you do.” With that, he sped up, turning his slow and relaxing swim into a fast and aggressive one. He used his tail, built for agility and ease, to help weave himself a more difficult, hard-to-follow path.

It took him a while to realize Allura wasn’t on his trail, wasn’t following him, and he wondered if she’d even bothered to follow him at all, or if he’d just lost her somewhere in his crazed swim. Even still, he was cautious and paranoid after having been followed once, so he continued to swim, continued to create long and weaving paths through everywhere and nowhere before he finally turned back towards his destination: the cavern.

By the time he got there, it was much later than he’d intended for it to be. The sun was sinking in the sky, casting a pink glow on the surface of the ocean, sparkling down at Lance. It was around the time that Keith usually left the cavern, packing up whatever supplies he’d brought and apologizing, saying he had to be home for dinner.

Needless to say, Lance super wasn’t expecting for Keith to be there. It was past their usual time and Keith hadn’t even shown up for the last week, so the chances of him being there _now_  were incredibly slim. Lance purposefully kept his hopes low, repeating these facts over and over in his head so as to keep them from rising.

It was because of this, all the good reasons why Keith wouldn’t be present, that Lance was particularly awed when Keith _was_. For a moment, he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, but there Keith was, stretched out on his stomach on a blanket with a book propped open in front of him.

He looked up when Lance crested in the tide pool, and he smiled.

“Hey,” he said.

“Keith!” Lance said, overcome with excitement. He rushed forward, barely comprehending what he was doing, and thrusted himself up on the ledge. Keith was already quite close to the edge as it was, and there wasn’t really room for both of them there, so this left Lance with one hand on the rocky surface and one hand splayed on Keith’s back. Rivulets of water were streaming down his torso, drenching Keith’s shirt, who made a noise halfway between a complaint and a greeting. His book stayed dry, at least.

“You’re here!” Lance cheered, his fingers now curling in the material of Keith’s shirt, as if to assure himself that he really was present. “I wasn’t even expecting you to be here especially since it’s so late and because you haven’t been here for an _entire week_  but I thought I’d check and —”

Keith laughed, cutting Lance off, and he struggled underneath Lance’s hand until Lance finally let up, getting off him and remaining hoisted in the air by his left hand alone. Keith sat up, his grin eating the rest of his face away, and Lance couldn’t help but mirror his expression.

“I’ve been trying to come all week — Shiro grounded me. But I’m ungrounded now, so.”

“Good,” Lance said emphatically. “I’ve missed you.” Oh God, was he coming on too strong? Keith was blushing. That was good right? Oh no! He was wrinkling his nose, shifting uncomfortably — what had Lance done wrong!?

“You really soaked me through,” Keith commented, pulling his shirt away from his skin. And then, in one swift movement, he tugged it over his head, revealing all this skin Lance had never seen before. He gaped, immediately cataloguing the similarities and differences between his chest and Keith’s.

Keith was a whole lot paler than him, but that’d already been established by his arms and legs and face. It was just now his entire chest was on display, and he was really _so pale_. They both had nipples, obviously, though Keith’s were way more pinkish than Lance’s. And over his hips, where Lance’s scales went soft and blended into skin, was just more and more smooth skin, disappearing under his pants. It was only interrupted by tiny, dark hairs, trailing up from the center of his pants to his—

“What is _that_?” Lance exclaimed. Unable to help himself, still flooded with excitement at Keith being here and overcome with new curiosity, he shot forward, rising pretty far out of the water as he pinned Keith down. Keith landed on his back with an “Oof!” as Lance’s hands splayed on his stomach, eyes wide as he leaned down, examining this… dent, right in the middle of his stomach. This _hole_.

“Ouch, Lance,” Keith commented, picking his head up to look down at him. But he didn’t turn all stiff and prickly, all _what are you doing, Lance?_  or _get off me, Lance!_  He just let it happen, a soft expression on his face.

Lance, fearless and full of curiosity, poked a finger directly into this hole. “Stop it!” Keith said immediately, reaching forward and snatching Lance’s hand. Lance struggled against his grip, _still curious, damn it!_ , but he let it happen.

“What is it?” Lance demanded, leaning closer to get a better look, now that he couldn’t feel it anymore. It didn’t seem to go anywhere, just ending abruptly about half a finger-tip in. What was the point of it?

“It’s just a bellybutton,” Keith explained.

“That’s not a button,” Lance said. “You can press buttons.”

“It’s just what it’s called,” Keith said, and he finally struggled back upward, dislodging Lance and sending him splashing back into the pool. Lance stayed close, absentmindedly holding onto Keith’s knee, still mesmerized by this supposed “button”.

“It doesn’t do anything?”

“No,” Keith laughed. “It’s just there.”

Lance let it go, but he still felt a bit suspicious. He realized, belatedly, that he’d gotten Keith’s pants wet in all the commotion as well. He knew Keith didn’t like to get his clothes wet, always taking care to stay dry and warning Lance not to get water on him, but now he didn’t seem to care.

“Keith,” Lance said abruptly, come over with a sudden, strong desire to get Keith in the water with him, “swim with me.”

“Okay.”

“See, that’s what I thought you would say, and so I’ve prepared a — wait, what?”

“I said okay.”

“But... I prepared a speech!” Lance was gaping, unable to believe it. He’d been begging Keith for so long and, what? All it took was getting his clothes a little wet? Not seeing him for a week?

“Oh, well. You can still say it if you want?”

Lance huffed. “Now’s there’s no point.”

“Just do it.”

“It feels forced.”

“I won’t get in if you don’t tell me your speech.”

“I know you’re humoring me,” Lance said. “…And I appreciate it! Here goes,” he cleared his throat. “Keith. Swim with me. Please please please please please please please —“

“Oh my God, is this really your speech?”

“Yeah, is it working?”

“Not at all.” Keith stood up then, shucking off his pants and revealing the shorts underneath, similar to the ones Pidge wore.

“Oh my God, it’s happening,” Lance said, and Keith ignored him, sitting on the edge of the pool before finally pushing off and getting in.

Near the edge, the water was shallow — enough that Keith only dropped in to about his waist, the water nearly up to his bellybutton. Lance was grinning maniacally, almost unable to believe this was really happening, and Keith just looked supremely amused, shaking his head as Lance gestured him forward.

Keith could stand for much longer than Pidge could, but he eventually reached the part where the underwater ledge disappeared, and from there he started treading, his limbs flailing gracelessly underwater to keep him afloat. Humans always looked funny when they swam.

“Happy now?” Keith said, raising a single eyebrow at him, and Lance laughed.

“You don’t think you’re getting out of the water that easily, do you?”

His excitement was making him jittery, energy racing through his veins and telling him to _move_. Lance did just that, he dove under the water, circling Keith’s legs, only to swim up again, circling Keith all together. He swam up against him, tail to legs and chest to chest, pressing against him and moving in circles around him, taking everything in him to not press his face into Keith’s neck, to grip him and hold him close as he moved around him.

He realized that Keith was chuckling, his hands held out and tracing Lance’s skin as he moved, fingers splayed and brushing Lance’s stomach, trailing over his tail.

Keith’s hair was wet, darker than usual and plastered down instead of being all fluffy. He had water droplets clinging to his eyelashes. Wanting to surprise him, Lance grabbed onto his hips and flipped onto his back, pulling Keith on top of him.

Pidge had been amazed by this when she’d first met Lance, how he could float in the water even with an entire person’s weight on him. Now, he watched Keith’s face as he experienced the same feeling, his legs spread, knees pressed against Lance’s ribs, his fingers splayed over Lance’s chest as he leaned forward, a grin decorating his lips.

Lance could feel the vibration of Keith’s legs kicking through the water, and the force of it slowly pushed them across the tide pool, Lance’s body acting as Keith’s vessel.

They got closer and closer to the opening that led out to the open ocean, the underwater tunnel connecting it and the cavern, and Lance suddenly, desperately wanted to be out there with Keith, able to swim fast and spaciously.

“Do you trust me?” Lance found himself asking, and Keith blinked down at him.

“Of course.”

“Awesome.” Lance pulled Keith down, flush against his body, and tried not to revel in the gasp that escaped from Keith’s lips, pressed against his shoulder.

“Hold your breath,” Lance instructed.

“What?”

“Hold it.” With that, Lance dragged Keith underwater. For a moment, he stiffened, his fingers digging into Lance’s back, before he seemed to relax. He really did trust Lance, then. Lance looked down at him, and Keith was already looking up. His eyes were open, and Lance grinned and blew air from his gills, flooding the water with bubbles simply to amuse Keith. And then he winked, kicking his tail into action and leading them through the tunnel he’d grown so used to traversing.

Lance swam as quickly as he could, aware that Keith couldn’t hold his breath forever. He remembered swimming this same path with an unconscious Keith, plugging his nose as he’d frantically pulled them through the tunnel, afraid Keith’s lungs would explode or give out. It seemed so long ago, now. He’d been as wary of Keith as Keith had been of him (well, almost). That Keith would never have gotten in the water to swim with Lance.

He felt Keith’s fingers tighten on him once again, and Lance took that as a cue for Keith needing to breathe. He picked up the pace just a little bit, and then they were bursting out of the tunnel, the open ocean surrounding them on all sides, boundless and depthless. Instead of staying to appreciate it, to let Keith appreciate it, he dragged him to the surface, grinning as they broke through and Keith gasped for breath, pushing his hair out of his eyes as he did.

“Woah,” Keith said, as soon as he could breathe properly.

“You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Good. Hold onto me.” He turned around, gesturing to himself. Keith huffed a big, over-exaggerated sigh, and swam forward, wrapping his arms around Lance’s chest.

“What are we doing now?”

“You’ll see,” Lance said mysteriously. “Squeeze me if you need to breathe.”

He dove back under the water, already wishing Keith’s lungs were bigger, that he could hold his breath for longer. Lance wished he could take him down to the floor, show him the beautiful reefs and his favorite hide-outs and his home. He couldn’t, though, and he would make do.

All that time in the cavern, Lance hadn’t really had a chance to show off. It was a relatively small pool, and the only entertaining thing about him had been the fact that he was a mermaid. He could blow bubbles from his gills and float on the water — be the very creature Keith and Pidge had never seen before. Now, they knew he existed, but they didn’t know how he lived.

Keith and Pidge had had plenty of chances to show off, doing all sorts of cool things that didn’t require a huge space. Lance had learned that Keith could stand on his hands and Pidge could bend herself into shapes that Keith could never hope to bend into. And now, Lance would show Keith the things he hadn’t been able to show before.

He swam, fast and harsh and explosive. He pushed hard with his tail, quickly learning to compensate for Keith’s weight, for his legs dragging in the water behind them. He even learned to time how long Keith could hold his breath. By the time Keith was squeezing him, signaling his need to breathe, Lance was already hurtling towards the surface. It wasn’t enough for him to just pop up and let Keith catch his breath, though. No, that wasn’t quite how Lance operated — not when he was showing off, anyway.

Instead, he burst through the surface, his whole body soaring out of the water, wind gracing every inch of his body, tail and skin alike. Amongst gasping for breath, Keith let out a hushed curse, one that sounded pretty wowed, and Lance grinned. He didn’t leave the area nearest the cavern, just swam back and forth, doing tight turns and fast loops and soaring over the ocean, laughing when Keith started to _whoop_  every time he did this.

Eventually, he felt satisfied in the amount of showing off he’d done. He brought them both to the surface, grinning as he deposited Keith in the water beside him.

“Oh my God,” Keith laughed. His arms and legs were kicking around in the water again, and Lance absently reached forward with one hand, grabbing Keith’s and holding him up in the water, the thoughtless movements of his own tail enough to keep them both afloat. “Do you always swim like that?!”

“Sometimes,” Lance huffed. He was a bit breathless, the swimming he’d been doing more exerting than he really wanted to admit. The sun was almost completely gone from the sky by now, the horizon just tinged with pink and orange, the rest of the sky growing a darker blue by the minute.

“Lance, that was amazing!” Keith said, his voice light and full of laughter. The dying sun was reflected in his eyes, caught on the edges of his hair and glowing on his skin.

Lance couldn’t help it. Keith just looked so beautiful, and his hand was warm in Lance’s and his cheeks were flushed and Lance could feel his legs in the water, still kicking idly, as if he hadn’t realized Lance was the one holding him up. He couldn’t help it. He pulled him forward, his hand remaining in Keith’s while his other one caught up against his side, splayed over the soft skin between his hip and ribs. Keith’s eyes widened, just slightly, right before Lance kissed him.

For a moment, Keith froze against him, sucking a breath in through his nose, and Lance had a split-second to wonder if he’d ruined everything. But then Keith unfroze, and he was moving against Lance, his lips warm and soft and his legs coming up to wrap around Lance’s waist. This made him rise up higher than Lance, his face angled down, making Lance arch his neck and press insistently upward to try to catch Keith’s lips better in his.

Accidentally, he stopped thinking about his tail, just wrapping his arms tighter around Keith and trying to pull him closer, closer. He sank, pulling Keith with him, and the ocean closed over their heads, lips still moving incessantly against each other until Keith stiffened and Lance realized exactly what had happened. He scrambled to get them back to the surface, horrified, but when they burst through it Keith was laughing, head pressed against Lance’s shoulder as he choked — not from inhaling water, but from laughing to hard.

“Keith? Keith! Are you okay? I’m so sorry!”

Keith wheezed and Lance grew anxious. He pushed him away, Keith’s legs staying stubbornly wrapped around him, and searched his face, eyes flickering all over his appearance.

“I’m fine!” Keith insisted, still trying to catch his breath. “I’m sorry it’s just — that kiss was so good you forgot to swim.”

Lance’s face flared red and he gaped, trying and failing to think of something to say. Finally, he settled on, “I didn’t forget!”

“Oh yeah? So you tried to drown me on purpose?” This made Lance’s mouth snap shut, and he glowered.

“Shut up,” he said. “You liked it too.”

Cheeks tinged pink, Keith grinned. “You’re right.”

The rest of their time spent together was back in the cavern, where Lance felt more confident in his ability to not drown the person he was pretty sure he was falling in love with. (Thinking this sent him into a panic spiral, so he hastily shoved the thoughts aside and resolved to ignore them.)

They didn’t even make out for the rest of the night. Instead, Lance floating on his back and Keith laid on him, legs stretched over his tail and an arm curled up under his chest as his cheek rested on Lance’s shoulder. His other arm dangled in the water, occasionally coming up to brush over Lance’s back or gently scratch the sensitive scales right around his hips.

They talked, their voices soft enough to not echo around the cavern, and the whole time Lance’s heart felt so full he was sure it was going to burst. He could feel the necklace he’d given Keith pressed against his own chest, trapped between them from where Keith was laying.

When it was time to go, late enough that Keith figured Shiro would be worrying about him and Lance’s family would be looking out for his return, they kissed — quick and chaste, a simple parting with a promise to return. Keith climbed out of the tide pool, water cascading off his entire body as he reached for his bag, pulling out a towel.

“You brought a towel?” Lance said, incredulous.

“Yeah,” Keith said. “I was planning to swim with you, so.”

God, Lance couldn’t stop smiling today, could he? Keith dried off as best he could, his shorts hopelessly wet and eventually hidden under a dry pair of pants. They’d swam long enough for Keith’s previously soaked clothes to dry.

“Bye, Lance,” he said, smiling a shy kind of smile as he stepped towards the cavern’s exit.

“Bye, Keith,” Lance echoed.

—

Hunk and Pidge very quickly found out about Lance and Keith’s new status of relationship. Hunk, because Lance practically flew home and told him everything immediately, and Pidge because she had a sharp eye and an even sharper mind. Apparently, she’d noticed something was up the very next time she saw Keith, and from there she’d dragged the truth out of him.

This meant when the four of them next got together, it was with Pidge and Hunk staring at them an uncomfortable amount, in their words, “Waiting for something cute to happen.”

“It’s not like we’re gonna kiss in front of you,” Keith scoffed. Lance had beamed at him when he’d emerged from the tide pool, finding Keith with his legs already dangling in the water, and Keith had smiled a soft smile just for him, ruined shortly thereafter by Hunk and Pidge’s relentless staring.

“We don’t need to see you kiss to see the chemistry,” Pidge said almost threateningly. Lance had been drifting closer and closer to Keith this entire time, intent on grabbing onto his ankles, but this statement had him feeling a bit called out, and so he halted his procession and pretended it hadn’t even been happening in the first place, floating on his back instead.

Unfortunately, Lance couldn’t stop thinking about Keith. It’d been only days since they’d swam together, kissed each other. Keith was literally _right there_  and Lance still couldn’t get him out of his head. He wanted to shove Keith backwards and lay on him. He wanted to drag Keith down to the bottom of the ocean and kiss him silly, preferably without Keith dying on him. He wanted to hold onto his ankles, and maybe have Keith run his fingers through Lance’s hair while he did.

Also unfortunate was the fact that he and Keith were trapped in a small space with two insatiably curious minds. While Hunk knew almost everything that had happened (Lance hadn’t told details of the evening sparingly), having Pidge pester them with questions reignited Hunk’s own curiosity, and he wasn’t opposed to hearing the details for a second time. Or answering the questions himself.

“How many times did you kiss?” Pidge demanded, after running out of patience for Keith and Lance to tell her all about it themselves. Keith turned and glared at Lance warningly.

“Don’t tell her anything,” he said. “She’s a gremlin and she can and will use anything you say against you.” And so Lance zipped his lips. Except…

“Two times, although the first one was more like a make-out,” Hunk said giddily.

“Hunk!” Lance exclaimed, betrayed. And then, looking at Keith, “I’m sorry! I tell him everything!”

Keith groaned, and from there they were subjected to the gruesome digging of Pidge and Hunk combined. Pidge delighted in asking question after question, no detail too small or insignificant for her to devour. It seemed like she enjoyed Keith’s reaction to the answers more than the answers themselves. It wasn’t just that she wanted to know that there’d “been tongue” in their kiss, she wanted to see Keith go all red-faced and embarrassed because of it.

“God, Pidge,” Keith huffed, arms crossed and clearly exasperated. “You’re worse than Shiro.”

This caught the attention of everyone in the cavern. Even Lance, who’d previously been trying to calm down the stampede of invasive questions, though Pidge wasn’t particularly interested in any of his fish-parts anymore, so it hadn’t been working.

Keith tuned in to the sudden quiet, sitting up straighter and arms un-crossing as he looked around. “What?”

The corners of Lance’s lips turned up into a smirk. “You told Shiro about me?”

Just like that, Keith’s eyes widened. Blood rushed to his face as he tried to shake his head, tried to deny what he’d already proven to be true. “No! I mean, well —”

Pidge was staring at him, an excited, hungry look in her wide eyes. “You told Shiro,” she said slowly, an odd lilt to her voice.

“It just came up, okay?” Keith said. “I used Lance as an excuse for why I stole the boat —”

“You told him you’re friends with a mermaid?!” Pidge exclaimed, and Keith shook his head, frustrated.

“Boyfriends,” Hunk put in helpfully, and Lance felt himself flush.

“ _No_ , Pidge. I told him I was stealing the boat to impress Lance.”

“Aww, Keith! You were trying to impress me?”

“What? No! I was making an excuse!”

Lance was grinning.

“I stole it to save you from the sailors, remember?”

Lance stopped grinning. “Don’t need to bring it up,” he pouted.

Pidge quickly moved on from Lance’s hurt emotions. “You said I was worse than Shiro,” she pointed out. “Which means that Shiro was asking you a bunch of questions too.”

Keith shrugged. “He asked me if I kissed Lance so I locked myself in my room.” At this, Pidge grinned evilly.

“If he was asking you this when you got home, that means he had reason to think along these lines before you left. Meaning you were talking to him about liking Lance _before you kissed him.”_

Keith’s scowl was answer enough, and Lance laughed. “You _liiike_  me,” he sang, and Keith rolled his eyes.

Hunk quickly ruined Lance’s fun. “Okay but you were gushing to me about having a massive crush on Keith like, a week ago, Lance.”

“Hunk!” Lance shouted, immediately shushing him, as if he could take back his words. Keith looked less embarrassed now. In fact, he looked entertained.

Lance decided to never tell Hunk anything ever again.

—

“Oh no!” Lance said, holding his breath as the two characters on the screen fought. Their swords clashed, the two men moving across the terrain quickly and skillfully.

_“I admit it — you are better than I am.”_

_"Then why are you smiling?”_

_“Because I know something you don’t know.”_

_“And what is that?”_

_“I am not left-handed.”_  With that, the character threw his sword into the air and caught it in his right hand, grinning now.

Keith was right in thinking Lance would enjoy this. He’d come to the cavern today and pulled what he called a “laptop” out of his bag, saying there was something he wanted to show Lance.

“It’s just like a fairytale,” he promised, while shoving the ends of his pants up to his knees so he could submerge his feet in the water, the rest of his body laying back and using his backpack as a pillow. “Except you watch it happen.”

Lance, eager to experience any fairytale, had hoisted himself out of the water. Only the end of his tail was in it now, idly bumping against Keith’s feet every now and again. He was cuddled up against Keith, a blanket spread underneath them, though the cold of the floor was still seeping into Lance’s back, not that he minded very much, the warmth of Keith’s body doing enough to heat him up.

The movie continued on, Lance having gotten better at not abruptly sitting up and leaning closer to the screen whenever anything dramatic happened, or trying to touch the screen with his fingers just to see what would happen (it didn’t affect the movie at all). It was a really good movie too — full of love and danger and adventure and revenge — all the components for any good fairytale.

_“There’s something I ought to tell you.”_

_“Tell me.”_

_“I am not left-handed either.”_ The character then, too, switched the hand they were fighting with, the fight commencing again afterwards.

“OOOHHHHHH!” Lance shouted, sending Keith into a fit of laughter. Lance couldn’t help reacting to the movie. It was just so dramatic, being able to see it all playing out before his eyes instead of having to imagine it all himself.

When the movie was over, Lance spent a good ten-minutes going over everything that had happened with Keith, pointing out his favorite parts and the most dramatic moments and suggesting they watch it again sometime. At that, Keith pointed out that there were millions of movies out there, and next time he could download another one for Lance to watch, if he wanted.

It’d been a few weeks since they’d started dating, and still Lance was giddy and excited every time he got to see Keith. It didn’t even matter if they were doing something new or fun or exciting together — everything just felt that way when Lance was with him. They’d gone swimming together a few more times, sometimes just drifting aimlessly on the ocean surface, and Keith had convinced Lance to try several different types of human food, sharing the lunches he sometimes brought when he visited. Lance’s favorite was anything that had sugar in it, and he was quickly becoming addicted, the taste sensations new and exciting on his tongue.

With the movie finished and the laptop pushed out of the way, Lance rolled on top of Keith, using his hands and the bit of his tail still submerged in the water to assist him. Keith grunted, but lifted his hands to rest on Lance’s sides anyway.

“Hey,” Lance said, smiling down at him. Keith snorted, trailing a hand up Lance’s side now, over his ribs and back down.

“Hey,” Keith returned the greeting. Lance bent down and pressed their lips together. Kissing Keith always felt good — as good as leaping from the ocean, as good as the sun, warm on his skin, as good as Keith’s fingers trailing lightly over his back...

_“Lance!”_

Lance jolted, his lips ripping apart from Keith’s as he stared down at him in horror. It clearly hadn’t been Keith who’d said his name so angrily (and with his lips otherwise occupied), and with trepidation he rolled back off him, staring into the tide pool with shock.

Allura was there, accompanied by two guards, all three of whom’s gills were twitching open and shut as they tried to adjust to breathing in the air. She looked a mixture of scared and furious, her eyes roving from Keith to Lance and back again.

“Allura,” Lance said, surprised. Terrified. At the sound of his voice, Allura seemed to gain her composure again. She glared at him, and Keith sat up, scooting a little bit away.

“How dare you,” she said, her voice low and filled with anger. Lance winced. “You endanger not only yourself, but your entire colony. And you _lied_  to me. On multiple occasions!”

“I can explain,” Lance tried feebly, but Allura wasn’t having it.

“Get over here _now_.”

“No,” Lance said. “Keith would never hurt me. He’d never hurt any of us.”

“Lance, look around you! He’s already got you out of the water!”

Lance scoffed. He was only out of the water because he wanted to be. “And I’ve had him _in_  the water. You’re wrong about humans, Allura!”

“I wasn’t so wrong when a pair of them captured you.”

“But _Keith_  saved me from them!” Lance exclaimed, gesturing to Keith as he said this. Keith looked wary and afraid. He’d pulled his feet out of the water at some point, and Lance was still stubbornly remaining on land.

“Guards,” Allura said simply, and they rushed forward without her even giving them a command. Lance gasped, momentarily grasping for Keith’s hand, their fingers slipping through each other’s, before the guards were grabbing onto the end of his tail and yanking him into the water. The edge of the tide pool scratched harshly against his back as he was dragged in, making him cry out in pain, and then he was in the water, his hands forced behind his back as one of the guards cuffed his wrists together.

“Are you kidding me, Allura?” Lance panted, back stinging and arms twisted uncomfortably. “You’re treating me like a prisoner now?”

“Yes, since you’ve been acting like a criminal.”

Very suddenly, a loud splash filled the cavern, waves ricocheting against Lance, and Keith was struggling towards him in the tide pool. “Let him go!” he said angrily, eyes blazing and clothes sticking to his skin.

The two guards turned to Keith, releasing Lance and shoving him behind them, and he whimpered in a panic. “Are you out of your mind?” Lance yelled, floundering in the water, unable to direct himself very well without the use of his arms. “Get out of here! You’ve seen how sharp our teeth are! They could hurt you!”

Lance finally managed to get up straight in the water, able to see past the guards, who were advancing on Keith slowly and warily, obviously still scared of humans. Keith looked indecisive, eyes darting between Lance and the guards. There was no way he could get around them, though, now when he had puny little meat-stick legs instead of a tail.

“Keith,” Lance said seriously, and Keith’s gaze locked on his. Lance could finally see the worry in his eyes, the fear, and he smiled reassuringly. “I’ll be all right. Okay? Get out of the water.” He nodded his head towards the edge, urging him out before the guards found their confidence and acted first. Keith let out a growl of frustration but stomped back towards the wall, hoisting himself out of the tide pool.

“Come on,” Allura finally spoke up, and the guards lost interest in Keith. They turned back to her, and one of them came up behind Lance and grabbed onto his bound hands, making his shoulders twinge a bit more uncomfortably, a pained grunt escaping him. Keith’s eyebrows lowered even further at the sound, but Lance just shook his head.

Allura went through the underwater tunnel first, one of the guards following right behind her. As the guard behind Lance tugged on his wrists, he made eye contact with Keith. _Love you,_  he mouthed. Keith’s eyes widened, his brow unwrinkling in surprise, and then Lance was dragged under the water and shoved unceremoniously through the small tunnel.

Swimming back to their reef was a pain. It was endlessly difficult to properly control his movements without the use of his arms and the guard directing him didn’t seem to care for his discomfort. Once there, he was paraded through the reef without fanfare, out in the open for anyone to see and gossip about. Great.

Finally, he was shunted into the castle and left alone with Allura, despite the guards offering to stay numerous times.

“He might have broken the law, but he’s not dangerous,” Allura had insisted, and then they were alone.

All this time, Lance hadn’t known exactly what to feel. First, there’d been shock. It’d kind of obscured everything else, and so it’d taken him a while to register any other feelings. Now, though, he knew he was feeling a whole lot more. Scared. Scared that Keith could’ve been hurt, scared that Keith might do something stupid and still himself hurt, scared that he wouldn’t be able to see Keith again. Confused as to how Allura had even found him, anyway. And angry. Furious. Mad at both himself, for getting caught in the first place, and Allura, for not even bothering to try to listen to him, for ruining the best thing he had going for him.

“Let me guess,” Lance said dryly, finally breaking the silence that had fallen over them. “I have a lot of explaining to do.”

“No,” Allura said shortly. “You broke the law, putting yourself and everyone around you in danger, and that’s that. Because you’re my friend, I’m going to express leniency. Instead of locking you up for the rest of your natural life, I’ll let you continue to live and go about your life in the reef. But _only_  the reef. No more exploring. No more putting our people in danger.”

“Wh— Allura, _what_? You can’t do that! Please! I — I love him.” At that, Allura’s face twisted.

“I most certainly can, and I will. You broke the law, Lance. You’re lucky I’m even giving you this much. And whatever you think you feel, you’re wrong. It’s just another human trick.”

“I can’t believe you,” Lance said, furious. Fuming. “You won’t even listen to what I have to say.”

“No, I will not.”

“I’ll never forgive you,” Lance said, low and serious. For a moment, surprise flashed in Allura’s eyes, but it was immediately wiped away. “All our years of friendship, all our cherished memories together — gone.”

“You’re being dramatic, and I’ll forgive you for it in time.”

Lance laughed. It wasn’t an amused laugh, but a loud, sarcastic, _angry_  laugh. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. And then, “Why don’t you exile me, instead? I’d rather live in a pool with the humans than trapped down here with you.”

Allura bristled. “That’s no way to speak to your princess.”

“You’re no princess of mine,” Lance spat. With that, he stormed out of the palace, but he had no idea where to go. Usually when he was mad or needed somewhere to be alone or to think, he went exploring. He left the reef. Except now…

Now, he was never supposed to leave the reef again.

Lance felt every hope, every dream inside him, crumble. Crushed. Broken.

Almost idly, he reflected on that fairytale he’d heard so long ago, the one about the human and the mermaid. He remembered what the storyteller had said. _There’s a reason it’s a fairytale, Lance. It’s more of a cautionary tale than anything else. They both end up unhappy, remember?_

Maybe Lance really wasn’t meant to have a happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the movie keith and lance were watching is "the princess bride" if you were wondering!
> 
> oh and sorry for the kind of cliff-hangery ending! i'll try to get the next chapter written as soon as possible. alsooo i have two more chapters planned after this, so i think this little story is coming to an end, just a warning!! <3
> 
> [my tumblr](http://www.tumblr.com/jilliancares)  
> :]


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “All right, well…” Lance said, angling a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go taunt this shark with my life now.”
> 
> He’d only just begun to drift in the direction of the cave’s exit when the man shouted, “Wait!” and lunged forward as well as he could with none of the right body parts for water. His hand clenched around Lance’s wrist, and he said breathlessly, “Do you know Keith?”

Keith had always been fast.

As a kid, one of his favorite things to do had been to run. He’d had so much energy, and instead of getting it out by whining or shouting or begging his dad to entertain him like most kids did, he got it out by running. He’d convince Shiro to chase him, would run around the yard, the beach, the whole neighborhood. Shiro would give up long before Keith, but Keith never cared; he’d keep running anyway.

Despite all the times Keith had run in his life: from Shiro, as a little kid; to Pidge’s mom, after Pidge broke her arm on a swing; to his boat, when Lance had been captured and stranded — he’d never ran this fast before. There was some primal, urgent feeling lodged in the center of his chest, pulling him forward, towards his brother.

He didn’t even know what he was going to do. Didn’t know what to think or to say. All he knew was that Allura — Princess Allura, from what Lance had told him — had taken Lance away. The guards had hurt him, and Keith had been no match for them, and now Lance was gone and Keith was panicking and also he was maybe in love. Oh, fuck that — he was _definitely_  in love. Now wasn’t the time for revelations, wasn’t the time to admire the soft, warm feelings that Lance made erupt in his chest. Now was the time to concentrate on the angry, pulsing, thorny ball of emotions bundled under his skin, begging to unwrap and unleash. Keith was tempted to scream or growl or cry as he ran, but that would all be a waste of breath, and he could barely breathe as it was.

Finally, _finally_ , he was out of the forest and sprinting up the sandy dune towards his house on sore legs, panting so hard it hurt. A fleeting thought in his mind suggesting going to Pidge’s house, begging her for help, to figure out what to do — but he ignored it. The rest of him was just screaming that he needed Shiro, needed his brother.

God, despite himself, he’d told Shiro so much about Lance. At first, it’d been all Shiro pestering him and Keith trying his best to ignore him, embarrassed beyond belief at the conversation at hand. But very quickly, Keith had realized he liked talking about Lance, liked gushing about the color of his eyes and feeling of his skin and sound of his voice, liked telling Shiro about the jokes he made and the way he smiled and how his ears stuck out just a little too far. Once he realized that, it hadn’t taken much prodding from Shiro at all, just one question and the floodgates were practically open, and Keith was spilling all his innermost thoughts and feelings and supplying Shiro with more blackmail material than anyone deserved to have.

Shiro liked Lance. He liked Lance because Keith liked Lance and it was impossible for him to talk about Lance in a way that made him seem anything but absolutely wonderful. He kept asking Keith when he could meet Lance, actually, and Keith had been doing his best to avoid answering that question at all costs. But now things were different, and Keith was panicking, and maybe having Shiro meet Lance could actually fix things entirely.

Finally, he burst through the front door, breath rasping through his mouth and knees shaking from exertion. Shiro was in the kitchen, holding a knife and surrounded by strawberries with the tops cut off.

“Keith?” he said, worry edging its way into his voice as Keith stumbled into the kitchen. Everything he wanted to say was jumbling up in his mind, fighting to get free and becoming a giant mess instead. What did he say first? That Lance was in danger or that he was a mermaid? That Keith needed Shiro’s help or that he’d still been lying to him all this time?

Instead of doing any of this, he broke down. He managed a weak, strained, “Shiro...” before his brother was coming forward and wrapping him up in a hug, so tight it almost hurt but completely perfect all the while. His prosthetic was behind Keith’s back while his other hand had found its way to the back of his neck, his fingers scratching into his hair in an attempt at comforting him.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice barely hiding the panic he was clearly feeling.

Keith struggled out of Shiro’s arms, needing space to think, to compose.

“It’s Lance,” he finally said, and Shiro’s face fell.

“Oh no...” he said. “Did he break up with you?”

“No.”

At that, his brother’s expression hardened, his lips going white with how hard they were pressed together. “Did he hurt you?”

“What? Shiro — no. I just — he’s —” Keith groaned, tossing his head back and tugging painfully at his hair. “I need to come clean.”

“Keith...”

Keith crossed and then uncrossed his arms, his foot tapping noisily against the floor. Even as he fought against his own dilemma, Lance was being pulled further and further away from him, back to his home to experience whatever punishment mermaids received for consorting with humans.

“Just tell me,” Shiro said, eyes earnest and kind. “I can tell whatever it is is bothering you, and I promise I won’t get mad. At least, not until after whatever it is is sorted.”

“Okay,” Keith said, nodding now. “Okay. Lance is a mermaid.”

Silence.

Keith stood there. Shiro stood there.

Keith stared at him. Shiro’s eye twitched. He didn’t seem to be breathing. And then, very slowly, he blinked. And inhaled.

“Okay,” he said, practically straining to stay calm. Keith’s mouth was twisted, waiting for Shiro to explode. “Okay. That’s fine. I mean, that’s not fine —” he laughed, a higher pitch than usual, and forcefully cleared his throat. “But that’s obviously not what’s bothering you, is it?”

“No,” Keith said, on a long exhale that deflated his body. “Um — his people, his princess... found us. They took him away.” His voice wavered as he said this.

Shiro’s expression was still carefully blank. Keith’s legs were shaking, he was pretty sure.

“Okay,” Shiro said again, still controlled. “Well, maybe this is actually a good thing.”

“Shiro —”

“I mean, mermaids are dangerous, and Lance is probably in a lot of trouble right now, so maybe it’s best if —”

“I love him,” Keith blurted, feeling his face go red as Shiro sucked in a breath, and then groaned quietly.

“Oh, Keith...”

“I have to get him back, Shiro,” Keith said urgently. “The guards they — they took him, and I think they hurt him, and I _have_  to see him again, Shiro! He makes me happy.”

Finally, Shiro huffed. “All right,” he said. “Okay. I guess... there’s maybe something I could do.”

Keith’s hopes skyrocketed. He latched onto this scrap of a chance at everything being okay and _clung_ , desperate.

“Observation Day’s coming up. My whole department’s going down there, you know the drill.”

Keith did know the drill. Shiro went there every year, helped to conduct the studies and observations and whatnot. Keith knew that, beside that, he was also keeping his eye out, secretly searching for the mermaid that’d saved his life.

“What are you gonna do?” Keith asked

“I could try to talk to the princess while I’m down there,” Shiro said. “But I can’t guarantee she’ll listen to me. Lance broke one of their biggest laws. I can vouch for you, but I don’t know what good it’d do.”

“Tell her we’re in love,” Keith said desperately. “Tell her that I’d never hurt them, that I just want to see Lance again.”

Shiro hummed thoughtfully. “Maybe you can tell her, instead,” he said, and Keith frowned, wondering what idea his brother was cooking up.

—

After a full 24-hours of being restricted to the reef for the rest of his life, Lance was ready to stage a break out. Or die.

He was full of this flighty, inescapable kind of panic. He felt trapped, like walls were pressing in on him despite the open water on all sides. Word of his law breakage had already spread throughout the colony, and everyone was giving him these sideways glances, pretending as if they couldn’t tell that Lance knew they were looking. No one wanted to talk to him. No one wanted to be seen with him.

Except for Hunk, of course. Even Lance’s family was furious at him. His mother had practically skinned him alive with all the ranting she’d done when he’d come back from the palace the previous day, and his siblings didn’t really know what to do with him. His nieces and nephews didn’t seem to care, though. When no one was looking, they pestered Lance for answers, wondering what humans were like, what the surface was like.

Feeling vindictive, Lance told them the truth. “Great,” he’d said. “Humans are just like us, but with legs. And _feet_. And the surface is fantastic — the sun’s so much warmer up there.” He’d watched their eyes light up at this information, and part of him felt guilty. All the things he’d experienced were against the rules. It wasn’t fair to taunt them with the truth of it all when they’d never be able to experience it without getting in trouble.

“Cheer up, Lance,” Hunk said now. It seemed to be his mission. _Operation: Make Lance Not Depressed Anymore._  Lance had definitely fallen into a funk, he was willing to admit. He was drifting around with none of his usual excited fervor, the water just feeling like a big bowl of pointless soup all around him. “Allura was mad when she sentenced you to a life in the reef. I’m sure you could talk to her once she’s cooled off. She’ll let you leave the reef again.”

“That’s only half of it, Hunk,” Lance muttered. Sure, staying in the reef forever was like, the worst thing Lance could think of. Being trapped, encased, caged. But even worse was losing Keith and Pidge and their cavern and the surface.

Recently, seeing them and going to the surface was all he wanted to do. Nothing else was so fun, so entertaining, so strangely fulfilling. And even more recently, he’d realized just — everything, about Keith. That there was nothing quite like being in his company, that he could spend hours with him that seemed to past as fast as minutes, that he loved him. And now, he might never see him again. He had no idea what Allura would do to him if he did go to see Keith, only to be caught again. Not to mention the fact that he was pretty sure he was being watched.

Everywhere he went, eyes followed. And he was sure he’d seen a few of the same sets of eyes throughout the day. He was a prisoner, basically. He was being forcefully kept here, and guards were watching him to make sure he stayed.

Lance was faster than a lot of the merfolk, though. Maybe he could out-swim the guards. Maybe he could run away.

He didn’t know how he would survive on his own, though. He was used to living in a colony, used to sharing and being shared with, used to the safety that came in numbers. If he wanted to run away, he’d have to try to find a space to call his own, and maybe fight the other sea-life there to ensure it.

“Don’t give up hope, buddy,” Hunk said, his hand coming up to rub over Lance’s back. “Allura’ll come around eventually, and… Well, maybe I can go up to the cavern sometime. I can tell Keith what’s happening, and that you’re okay. Plus, you still have Pidge’s device.”

Surprised, Lance looked down at his neck. That was true… How could he have forgotten about it? He’d have to be careful. If Allura recognized it, he’d be in even more trouble. And worse, if she knew he had it, she’d take it from him. At least right now, he could still contact Pidge if he needed to, though he had no idea where he could do that. He had a feeling if he tried to call her anytime soon, Allura would find out. There were too many people watching him.

“It’s too dangerous for you to go,” Lance sighed, almost unwilling to admit this truth. Hunk was Lance’s best friend — chances were, he was being watched too. The last thing Lance needed was for his best friend to be punished right along with him. “But… maybe you’re right. Maybe I can make Allura come around.”

“Yeah,” Hunk said encouragingly, smiling now and looking proud. “You just have to wait and —”

“I’m gonna go talk to her now.”

“Wait, Lance, that’s not what I —”

“The sooner I can make her come around, the sooner I can go back to sneaking around to be with Keith.”

“Lance —”

“Or maybe I could even convince her to like Keith,” Lance said. “Get her to trust him.” With that, Lance was shouting goodbye to a groaning Hunk and swimming towards the castle.

He was still beyond pissed at Allura. Just thinking about her had his blood pressure rising, had him thinking up rants in his mind, fights that he won and Allura succumbed, letting him go back to Keith. It was hard to believe that one of his friends, someone who he’d once been so much closer to, couldn’t even manage to see from his point of view. Wouldn’t even _try_.

But he had to face her. Maybe even forgive her. He couldn’t live with being trapped here for the rest of his life, certainly couldn’t live with never seeing Keith again.

Despite being a law-breaking criminal now, the guards still let him waltz right into the castle. They always had, and it seemed old habits died hard. He ran into Coran, who gave him a sad, pitiful kind of smile, and patted his back after directing him towards the room Allura was currently holed up in.

He cleared his throat after entering a lounge room of sorts, and Allura turned around to look at her visitor. “Lance,” she greeted.

“Princess,” Lance returned, trying hard to keep a cap on his anger. He wanted to start shouting, screaming. Wanted to yell and cry and demand that she let him return to the surface, let him see Keith. Instead, he tilted his chin upward a bit and cleared his throat for a second time. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Allura nodded her head, signaling for him to continue.

“I think we’re wrong about humans.”

Just like that, Allura’s expression hardened — her eyes narrowed and her lips pressed together. “Lance,” she said warningly.

“Hear me out!” Lance said, begging as well as he could with his eyes. “They’re not like what you think.” Allura opened her mouth to interrupt, and Lance hastily forged on. “And it’s not like I went _looking_  for Keith,” he explained, leaving out Pidge because, come on, consorting with a single human was one thing, but _two_  humans? “He was on a boat in a storm, and it capsized, and I saw him drowning, and… I just couldn’t let him die, okay?”

Allura looked surprised at this, almost. Her eyes were wide, her mouth just barely open, before she schooled her expression. “Well, you should have,” she said. “Human affairs aren’t our matters. It shouldn’t matter to us whether they live or die.”

“ _Allura_ ,” Lance said, because that was harsh even within the laws of their colony. Like… that was an entire life, right there. Allura was the kind of person to get teary-eyed over an injured sea turtle, much less a _dead_  one.

“Laws are laws and humans are humans, Lance,” Allura said firmly. “There’s no changing my mind about any of this.”

Lance felt like his blood was boiling under his skin. He just wanted to dig into Allura’s brain and force some sense into her! She was being so stubborn, so obstinate, and it was so unlike her. Lance had seen her hear out criminals that had stolen and lied and done all kinds of bad crap. Meanwhile Lance was supposed to be her friend, and the only rule he’d broken was _falling in love_  (…with a human), and she wouldn’t even give him the decency of her time. She was already ushering him out, expression cold and stony.

It was hard not being her friend. Lance was just so used to it, used to knowing she was someone he could turn to and someone that would typically trust and believe in him. But now… he just — couldn’t. What’d he’d said the day before was true: he couldn’t be her friend anymore. He couldn’t forgive her for this.

Maybe Allura couldn’t relate, being the Princess and literally the most desired mermaid in the colony, but love was pretty hard to come by. Not everyone wanted a suitor and the one’s that did typically didn’t want _Lance_ , for whatever reason. Except Keith. Keith had wanted Lance. He wanted Lance a whole lot, actually, and Lance was finally experiencing what he was so sure he’d been missing out on all this time. And now Allura was taking that from him, destroying it, and Lance felt so hollow he was sure he was going to dissolve, going to drift into a billion little pieces, dragged away on the ocean currents.

Anger came rushing back in. Trying to compose himself for Allura’s sake, for the chance of moving her with his stellar morals or convincing her with his cold hard facts, was no longer working. The mask he’d been wearing — his normal, casual, currently tinged with disappointment and fear and longing face — was replaced with the one hiding beneath it. The one expressing nothing but pure anger, fury, a desire for Allura to know how deep his feeling ran, how unforgiving he truly felt. He saw a flash of this realization on Allura’s face, but he didn’t give himself time to take in any more than that.

This was it, then. There was no hope. Not until he could devise a plan of escape, anyway. He wasn’t just going to sit around, idly by, while his life wasted away around him. And he wasn’t going to let this be the end of his relationship with Keith, either. Sure it was still new, but mermaids tended to only have one love, anyway. And besides that, Lance was in love with more than just Keith: he was in love with the surface, the sun, the waves. He was in love with adventure and freedom.

He didn’t bother with a goodbye as he left the room, left the palace. And he swam right past the guards, too, paying no mind to how they followed him with their eyes, watching him, observing him. He was already thinking.

He would tell Hunk he was leaving, of course, but he wouldn’t beg him to come with him. He wanted Hunk to come. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his days as the only mermaid around, always swimming on his own, but he couldn’t do that to Hunk, couldn’t try to tear him away from his family. If Hunk offered to come, Lance wouldn’t argue. But he wasn’t going to beg, either.

And he definitely wouldn’t be able to tell his family he was leaving. They’d all freak. They’d probably call the guards on him, even. But he’d tell his little nieces and nephews. He’d tell them the night before he left, weave them a big adventure he was going on and let them believe that everything would be all right for him. And maybe it actually would be.

Mind made up, Lance was particularly deep in his own head, planning, when he ran into Hunk.

“Lance,” Hunk said urgently, and Lance looked up, wondering how he could possibly be in trouble already. He hadn’t said any of his musings aloud, had he? Sometimes he did that, spoke as he was thinking, which was a bad habit but a surprisingly hard one to kick, considering he never even noticed when he was doing it. Luckily, this didn’t seem to be the problem. Hunk didn’t appear to be in a panicked state of urgency, just an… urgent, state of urgency.

“What’s up, buddy?”

“I have an idea,” Hunk said, and then his eyes darted around cautiously, cataloguing all the people surrounding them, failing at surreptitiously watching them, and wow — maybe Hunk had noticed they were being watched all along. “About, you know. What you could potentially do about all this.”

Lance cocked his head. “Why don’t we swim around casually while we discuss this new development?”

And so they did. And Hunk explained that Observation Day was tomorrow, something that had managed to slip Lance’s mind in all the commotion of his life, recently. When he was younger, it’d been a day he’d dreaded, but in more recent years, it was something he’d looked forward to. As a kid, he’d been scared of the humans, observing them from a safe distance and watching the way their strange appendages moved through the water, examining their multitudes of equipment and concluding they looked kind of like machines.

Once he’d turned about eleven, though, Lance’s entire outlook on the government humans changed. It wasn’t really anything specific, just a new found bravery that probably came from a little Lance trying to prove he was something bigger and cooler than he was. He started getting braver, swimming closer to the humans and trying to see their faces through the strange masks they always wore.

Sometimes, when he was close enough, one of the humans holding their boxes that Allura had once explained were “cameras” would aim it at Lance, which he never really knew what to do about. The first time this had happened, he’d frozen, eyes going wide and body kind of freezing in fear, wondering if the so-called camera could somehow hurt him. Thankfully, the human had apparently realized it was scaring him, and turned the camera away. Lance had darted back to safety, completely sure he had totally almost died.

As the years passed, he’d grown more confident. The next time a camera was aimed at him, he’d only frozen for a second, before cautiously shooting the thing a smile, eyes darting between it and the human. From what Lance could tell of the inventions, they recorded things and played them back later. With a sudden realization, Lance concluded that the movie he’d watched with Keith had been filmed with one of these things. And then he wondered if he was in _movies_.

Anyway, Lance had totally been planning to grin and shoot the camera a pair of finger guns this year. Ever since the last observation day, when he’d done a little wave that had made the camera-toting human freak out with excitement, he’d been talking up his new plan to Hunk, thinking up ways of how he could surprise whatever human he came across this time. Hunk laughed at his plans, but he was always too shy and wary to try to interact with the humans at all, usually trying to hole up in his home all day to avoid them.

But Observation Day had slipped Lance’s mind completely. He had no reason to look forward to the rare, once-in-a-year-chance of seeing a bunch of humans in his waters when he saw a pair of humans practically every other day — and ones he could actually talk to, to boot.

“But what about Observation Day?” Lance finally asked, after making sure no one was really close enough to hear anything they said.

“Keith said his brother was in the government, right? That he worked with marine life? Well, maybe he’ll be here tomorrow.”

Lance’s eyes widened, the wheels in his brain turning at hyper-speed, trying to think of something he could do with this information.

“If you found him, the least you could do is explain everything that’s happened to you, and he could tell Keith,” Hunk explained, and Lance was nodding eagerly, desperately. A part of him, somewhere in the back of his mind, had been secretly worrying over what Keith thought was happening, fretting over whether Keith thought he was in some sort of pain or something. “But also… maybe you could get him to talk to Allura.”

All right, Lance wasn’t quite following anymore.

“It’s one thing when you say humans are harmless, but I mean… If one of the humans that are here every year says it… If Allura trusts him enough, and could extend that trust to Keith… Maybe that could be the answer.”

Lance nodded slowly, debating this option in his mind. _Or_ , he thought, feeling a pang inside him as he didn’t voice this plan aloud to Hunk, _he could help me form a plan of escape._

“Thanks, Hunk,” Lance said genuinely, trying to appear like he wasn’t about to go behind his friend’s back. Hunk’s plan sounded good in theory, sure, but Allura was unmovable. Lance wasn’t going to risk his chance of planning an escape with Shiro by having him talk to Allura.

Hunk patted his back, rubbing over it a few times for good measure. “Anything for you, dude,” he said simply. “I just hate seeing you so sad.”

That night, the usual announcement went through the colony. That Observation Day would commence in the morning, that the humans would be present and not to be alarmed. Lance was already home when he heard the announcement, lounging against the particularly soft copse of plants that acted as his bed.

Immediately, he felt wide awake. He felt ready. In a matter of hours, Shiro would be somewhere down here, and Lance just had to find him. He closed his eyes, trying to force himself to sleep, knowing that when he woke all he would have to focus on was finding Shiro.

—

“All you have to focus on is finding Lance,” Shiro instructed as they made their way down to the docks. This was assuming Keith was allowed to tag along, of course, but Shiro had a plan.

“I know.”

“And then you can go talk to the princess together,” Shiro continued.

“And you’ll come with us.”

“After you find me, yes. But until you find Lance —”

“Pretend I’m just one of the government workers, doing my job — I know. I got it, Shiro. We don’t have to keep going over it.”

“Sorry,” Shiro sighed, running a hand through the front of his hair. “I’m just anxious. I hope this works.”

Two submarines were stationed at the dock, Shiro’s fellow employees carting supplies to and from them, some of them already dressed in parts of their scuba gear and others yet to change. Shiro scanned the dock until he saw his boss, at which point he grabbed Keith’s arm and steered them in that direction.

“Sir,” Shiro said, stopping beside the captain, who turned to look at them. “This is Keith, my little brother.”

“Nice to meet you,” the captain said, holding out his hand for Keith to shake.

“He’s interested in joining our division,” Shiro explained, wrapping an arm around Keith’s shoulders and shaking him lightly, trying to play this thing up. “I was wondering if maybe, I don’t know, he could come with us?”

The captain frowned — not a disapproving frown, but a thoughtful one.

“He could stay with me and learn hands on,” Shiro said, and slowly, the captain nodded.

“Normally, I wouldn’t be all for this idea,” he said. “But you’re a great employee, and if your brother is half as good as you are he’d be a great asset to the team.” The captain grinned as he said this, and then he looked to Keith and winked. “Welcome aboard, son.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Keith said hastily, and then he and Shiro were hurrying into the submarine, Shiro finding a spare set of scuba gear for him.

—

Lance woke up all at once. There was none of that gradual, sleepy coming-to where he stretched and blinked and slowly realized he existed. This was just — eyes open, brain reeling, body moving. _Observation Day._

He was the first one awake in his family, and the first one to venture outside. A few merfolk were going about their day, swimming to and from unknown destinations. Much more attention-drawing than that, of course, were the humans. Lots of them.

There were ones with strange instruments, measuring whatever things they saw fit and taking pieces of plants and shells and sand and putting them into little plastic bags. There were the few with the cameras, panning over the area and focusing on anything worth the attention. The ones without specific jobs were just observing, probably to later fill out reports or do whatever they did with the information they collected.

Regardless of what job the humans appeared to have, their eyes and heads followed any mermaid they saw. It didn’t matter that they were here every year — their curiosity never faded.

As Lance arrived in the open water, heads turned, curious gazes locking onto him. He stayed still for a moment, realizing that he had no idea how he was going to find Shiro, short of asking every diver here if they knew him, and that was against the rules. They weren’t supposed to talk to the humans.

But he had no idea what Shiro looked like, besides the fact that he had a prosthetic arm, and Lance was pretty sure that fact would be easily covered up by the swimming outfits all the divers wore.

Really, the only good thing about this was the fact that no one was really watching Lance right now (besides all the humans, of course). Often times, the majority of the merfolk stayed in their homes on Observation Day, feeling creeped out and out of place with so many humans in their waters. And Allura’s guards were likely otherwise occupied, all on duty and actually guarding the castle. They trusted the government humans, but only to an extent.

 _Well,_  Lance decided, _I’m not gonna find Shiro if I’m not even looking._

With that, he started swimming, aware of every head following his movements. He paid special attention to all the humans’ arms, seeing if any of them looked particularly machine-like. This led to him swimming closer and closer to every human he passed, all of whom seemed excited about this prospect.

Lance didn’t blame them. He doubted many mermaids ever swam so close to them, and for any that sent him particularly wide-eyed looks, Lance gave them a wink.

It wasn’t Lance’s fault that he left the reef. He’d just been swimming in a straight line, crossing the reef, and he was used to being able to leave without it being a huge problem. And now, when he did leave, no guards were around to yell at him for doing so. Plus, he’d only done it in the first place because there was a human outside the reef, legs kicking slowly as they stared down off the shelf, where the ocean tumbled away into darkness.

Lance swam towards them, giving them a bit of a berth in case he startled them, which he did. It was a man. His head jerked when Lance swam into view, and he panned the camera he’d been aiming towards the deep darkness below to Lance instead. Lance grinned and shot the camera a pair of finger guns ( _nailed it_ ), and the human laughed, the sound muffled by his helmet.

Lance thought he vaguely recognized this human. He had a scar across the bridge of his nose, and Lance was pretty sure he’d posed for his camera in previous years.

He didn’t give himself time to hang around the human, though. He was still on a lookout for Keith’s brother. Besides, if Allura realized he’d left the reef — even if it was just by a few tail lengths — mere days after she’d instructed him to stay there forever, she’d flip.

Lance had only just turned around, lazing his way back towards the safety of the shelf, when a feeling of apprehension shivered all throughout his body. Some sort of instinct, buried in everything that lived in the sea, had Lance spinning around in a panic, eyes immediately locking onto the shadowy figure looming behind the oblivious human, camera still trained on Lance.

“Look out!” Lance shouted, because the shark behind the man wasn’t slowing down. Shark attacks were rare — they generally avoided the merfolk who in turn avoided them. But the water was filled with creatures it wasn’t usually filled with, and this shark was obviously curious, and hungry, and it had eyes on its very next meal.

The human heard him and he turned, much too slowly, to see the shark advancing on him. His body did some weird kind of instinctual spasm, and then he was jerking away from the shark, way too slow, limbs useless and flailing through the water.

Lance didn’t even think. He just did it — he careened into the diver, slamming into him bodily and clearing the area moments before the shark snapped at the water they’d just been occupying. The human made a weird, nervous kind of sound, but Lance didn’t have time to interpret it, as he was already swimming away, dragging the human with him.

The shark was intent on following. Perhaps it hadn’t had a good meal in a while — the colony _had_  just had a massive hunt, gathering for the feast they always had at the end of every Observation Day. Still, Lance’s life would be much easier if he were running away from any shark less persistent than this one. And it wasn’t like he was in any way trained on how to evade sharks — the general rule was to just avoid them so they wouldn’t _have_  to evade them.

And now, swimming frantically, lugging a useless human with him, he couldn’t think of anywhere to go. He was afraid of leading the shark back to the colony — on one hand, it might get spooked by the amount of people and leave them alone, but on the other, it could regard the reef as a feast of its own. Anyone could get hurt.

Lance glanced behind himself, taking in the beady-eyed shark, mouth open and teeth pointy as fuck, before facing forward and swimming with renewed vigor, muttering, “Fuck, fuck, fuck!” under his breath.

Still, Lance was swimming destinationless, parallel to the shelf so as not to lead the shark back home, but also unwilling to swim any further out into the open water. His only options seemed to be up or down, and there was really nowhere to go if he went up.

“The caves!” the diver gasped, pointing. His voice sounded weird from inside the mask, but it was still thankfully understandable.

“What if it follows us?”

“What if it _doesn’t_?” the human countered. This was a good enough reason for Lance, so he took a nose dive, the shark snapping at the water just behind him. _Fuck_ , these things were fast.

The caves were coming up close, the rocky cliff they were ensconced in familiar to Lance — somewhere around here, he and Hunk had first tried to activate Pidge’s device. All the caves looked safer than the open water Lance was currently swimming in, but he was still thinking rationally enough to not just dive into the very first one he saw. He had his eyes out for one with a smaller opening, a deeper inside, and — _there_.

Lance turned abruptly towards the cliff, rocketing inside one of the caves and not stopping, swimming as deep in as he could before finally looking back, breathing hard.

Outside the cave, the shark looked pissed, swimming in circles before the entrance. Lance breathed a sigh of relief, finally releasing the diver and looking at him properly. He was still holding the camera, a blinking red light on the top indicating it was still recording, though now it was just pointed at the floor. The man looked kind of shell shocked, eyes flicking back and forth between Lance and the shark.

“We don’t normally get chased by sharks around here, I swear,” Lance joked, hoping to break the tense atmosphere. It worked — the man laughed, shaking his head and regarding the shark again, something like disbelief in his eyes. The shark was still circling, still eyeing them like they were dinner.

“I have to admit, almost becoming shark food wasn’t on my agenda for the day. Nor was actually talking to one of you guys, for once. I thought your people had really strict rules about interacting with humans?”

Lance laughed. “Rules, shmules, am I right?” For a second, he wished Allura were there, just so she could hear him say this. Maybe he’d say it again later, to her face. “But listen, I don’t know how long this shark’s gonna hang around, and I’m actually looking for someone. So here’s the plan: I’ll go out there and distract it, let it chase me around, and you swim back to safety with those useless legs of yours. I’ll lead it away from the colony and ditch it later, somehow. Sound good?”

The human gaped at him, trying to take all of this in at once.

“Oh, and how rude of me!” Lance exclaimed. “I never introduced myself. The name’s Lance.” He extended a hand to shake, a common human formality and a not-so-common merfolk formality. But the man didn’t take Lance’s hand, he just gaped, eyes gone wide.

“Erm — Lance, did you say?”

“That’s the name, don’t wear it out.”

The man swallowed. “And… I don’t suppose that’s a very common name, down here?”

Lance finally put his hand back to his side, clearly rejected, and raised an eyebrow at the man’s strange line of questioning. “Umm, no. Don’t think so.”

And the man continued to stare at Lance. And Lance was beginning to feel incredibly weird.

“All right, well…” Lance said, angling a thumb over his shoulder. “I’m gonna go taunt this shark with my life now.”

He’d only just begun to drift in the direction of the cave’s exit when the man shouted, _“Wait!”_  and lunged forward as well as he could with none of the right body parts for water. His hand clenched around Lance’s wrist, and he said breathlessly, “Do you know Keith?”

It was only after he’d said this, the words drifting through Lance’s mind with a kind of dull clarity, that he realized what felt so weird about the hand holding his wrist. It was completely hard.

Slowly, Lance’s hand came up, and he knocked his knuckles against the man’s arm, momentarily bewildered at the feeling. “Metal,” he said aloud, kind of incredulously. And then again, with more fervor. “Metal! Metal arm! You’re Shiro!”

The man — definitely Shiro — looked taken aback, and he blinked, letting go of Lance in his surprise. “How do you know my name?” he asked, but Lance was too busy to answer him, his mind reeling.

“You’re the guy I was looking for!” he exclaimed, rushing forward and grabbing onto Shiro’s shoulders, surprising him. “Your Keith’s brother!”

“Er, yeah, I am, but —”

“Thank God I found you!” Lance said emphatically. And then he paused. “Wait. Um. Aren’t you curious as to how I know your brother?” His own eyebrows furrowed, and he thought back, and… “Did _you_  just ask me if I knew him?”

“Yeah,” Shiro said calmly. He was like, super calm compared to Lance. “Your Keith’s mermaid boyfriend, right?”

Lance couldn’t help it: he grinned. Keith must’ve told Shiro about him — like, everything about him, the whole truth — and here Shiro was!

“That’s me!” Lance agreed, and he grabbed Shiro’s arm, the metal one again, turning serious. “I need you to help me escape.”

—

Keith was having absolutely zero luck finding Lance. You’d think it’d be easy, spotting one loud, obnoxious, blue mermaid amongst all the others, and yet.

Hours had passed since Keith first emerged in the ocean along with the rest of the crew. He was trying to make himself look busy instead of like a kid in a grocery store that’d lost his mom, but that was exactly how he felt. Not only could he not find Lance, he also couldn’t find Shiro. Keith hadn’t thought that would be much of a problem — it’d been his idea to go off on his own and search anyway — but now that he was getting kind of desperate about Lance, he’d like to have a home base to go back to. But Shiro was nowhere to be found.

Keith groaned in frustration, whirling around angrily and wishing Lance would just make a sudden, magical appearance. His anger was kind of ruining the beauty of Lance’s home, too, seeing as he could barely spare a thought to appreciate it. He’d never thought he would ever be able to visit Lance’s home, and yet here he was, swimming among the beautiful reef, plants and coral and fish decorating his whole field of vision. Keith wanted to rip it all apart just to find where Lance was hiding.

Just then, two smaller mermaids came swimming past — children.

“My uncle says we were meant to go to the surface,” a little boy bragged, gesturing widely in his excitement. “He says that’s why we can breathe up there just as easily as down here. And he says the sun’s _warmer_  up there!”

The little girl he was swimming with scoffed. “Isn’t your uncle the one that just got arrested? For interacting with that human?”

Keith’s heart sped up, and he watched the passing mermaids with renewed interest.

“Shut up!” the boy said angrily. “He’s not _arrested_. He’s just not allowed to leave the reef anymore!”

“Whatever, Miguel,” the girl huffed, and she ditched him, swimming away superiorly. Miguel, angered, swam down and grabbed a rock off the sea floor, chucking it in the girl’s direction.

“Miguel,” Keith spoke up, and the little boy turned to look at him, jolting with surprise, apparently not having noticed him there. He looked apprehensive, eyes darting this way and that without locking onto Keith properly. It was then that Keith remembered the merfolk weren’t supposed to talk to the humans, so he turned away from Miguel, pretending to examine a seashell, but continued talking to him. “Is your uncle, Lance?”

The little boy made a surprised sound, but Keith saw him nod out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” he said. And then, suspiciously, “Why?”

Keith had to play this carefully. After all, he didn’t know this kid. And he definitely couldn’t tell him the truth. Miguel could end up turning around and getting Princess Allura, and that really wouldn’t be helpful at all. So lies it was, then.

“Well, your uncle’s kind of a celebrity with my crew,” Keith murmured, careful to make sure no one was around to hear them talking. Miguel had seemed to like bragging about Lance to that little girl, so maybe boarding the Lance-loving-train was the way to win this kid over.

Miguel gasped. “Really?! Why?”

“I’m not really supposed to say this,” Keith said seriously, sparing a glance at Miguel, who looked entranced, “but a few of our crew have gotten to talk to Lance before. He’s really funny, and tells great stories.”

“Yeah!” Miguel agreed passionately, practically vibrating with excitement. “That sounds just like my Uncle Lance!”

Keith risked a glance at the kid, making himself smile sheepishly as he admitted, “I’ve never actually gotten to talk to him myself, but I was hoping this year would be the year. You wouldn’t happen to know where he is, would you?”

Miguel looked ecstatic at the idea of his uncle being some big celebrity among the humans, and he immediately put his hand to his chin to think, pursing his lips. Keith could see so much of Lance in his mannerisms, and even in his face, that it just made him miss him more.

“Ummmm,” Miguel said seriously, face scrunched hard in thought, before he let out a huge sigh. “I have no idea where he is. But maybe Hunk knows!”

Keith tried not to let his face show that he knew Hunk, and he nodded excitedly.

“I could take you to him,” Miguel offered brightly, and Keith took him up on that offer, following at a distance as Miguel led him through the reef until they came to a little outcropping of rock that was similar to the rest of the merfolk’s homes around here. Miguel stuck his head inside the structure and hollered for Hunk.

A moment later, Hunk was emerging, frowning. “Hey Miguel, what’s going on?”

“I need you to help me find Lance!” Miguel said eagerly, beaming up at Hunk. “He’s a celebrity!”

“What?”

“He’s a celebrity to the humans! This human wants to meet him!” With that, Miguel flung out a finger at Keith who’d gone previously unnoticed, and Hunk barely spared a glance for Keith before he was reprimanding Miguel.

“Miguel! You know you’re not allowed to talk to the humans. Lance just got in trouble for that, remember?”

Miguel’s shoulders slumped. “I remember.”

“Good,” Hunk said, before patting Miguel on the shoulder consolingly. “We don’t need _two_  McClain’s in trouble, do we?” This made Miguel laugh, and then Hunk was sparing a proper look at Keith, and his eyes widened with recognition.

“Say, Miguel, why don’t you go find a pretty rock? I’m sure if you made Lance a bracelet, it’d cheer him up.”

“You really think so?” Miguel said breathlessly, and then he was gone, zipping away through the water without sparing a glance for Keith. Hunk looked around furtively before reaching forward and yanking Keith into his home.

“What are you doing here?!” he demanded in a hiss.

“Helping Lance!” Keith whispered back. “Maybe Allura will listen to me. Or if not me, my brother.”

Hunk looked torn between reprimanding Keith and thanking him for even being there, so he bit his tongue and said nothing about it at all. Then he took a deep breath and said, “I have no idea where Lance is. He’s out looking for Shiro right now, actually. But maybe we can go talk to Allura without him. It might be better that way, actually. He just makes her angry whenever he sees her lately…”

And with that, the two of them were off, Keith glancing anxiously around and hoping Lance would show up anyway.

—

With the appropriate amount of pleading and guilting (how the hell did he do that?), Shiro got Lance to agree to talk to Allura. Shiro was sure he’d regret it if he was never allowed to return home again after running away, and though Lance had vehemently disagreed and claimed he’d be fine, he was kind of glad Shiro was making him do it anyway.

Apparently Keith was somewhere down here as well (Keith! In Lance’s home!), and Shiro had tried to insist on finding him before they went to talk to Allura, but Lance had given that idea a solid _no, thanks_. Sorry, but he didn’t want Keith to see him getting chewed out by Allura, as she apparently liked to do to him nowadays.

And so here Lance was, leading Shiro through the reef without trying to seem like he was leading Shiro through the reef. Once closer to the palace, he warned Shiro in a murmur that it might be hard to get the guards to agree to let him in, seeing as he was a human, and all. Allura only ever saw the captain, who would go to her castle on Observation Day for formality’s sake.

“Hello gentlemen,” Lance said fancifully, stopping before the two guards standing outside the palace.

“Lance,” one of the guards said with a nod.

“Um. This here human — from the government — wants to talk to Allura. Erm. I mean, he _has_  to talk to Allura, because…”

“Another one?” the guard commented idly, and the other one gestured them forward lazily. “Whatever. Come on in.”

Surprised, and kind of suspecting trickery, Lance edged past the guards, Shiro on his tail. He squinted between the guards suspiciously, feeling like a giant cage was about to drop down on him or something.

“She’ll be in the throne room,” one of the guards informed helpfully, and Lance just nodded his thanks before continuing on, leaving the weird situation behind him.

“Well that was strangely easy,” Lance muttered, and Shiro made a noise of assent behind him.

Lance led them towards the throne room, where voices were already emanating from. They were arguing, growing louder as they got closer, though Lance wasn’t entirely sure if that was due solely to the proximity.

Actually entering the throne room was a lot for Lance to process. First of all, both Keith and Hunk were already in there, and they were clearly the source of all the arguing. Allura was all up in Keith’s grill, jabbing a finger into his chest as she practically shouted at him, but Keith was just as loud as her, trying to talk over her as he argued, glaring at her with his pretty face. Hunk was trying desperately to diffuse the tension, adding even more shouting into the mix.

Lance just stayed in the doorway, gaping and confused. Beside him, Shiro was stock still, and when Lance glanced at him, his mouth was hanging open inside his helmet. He looked shell shocked.

As if he were speaking to no one, Shiro muttered to himself, _“It’s her.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so i THINK there's just gonna be one chapter left after this unless some extra plot point makes itself known in my head
> 
> anyways, follow me on [my tumblr](http://jilliancares.tumblr.com/) if you wanna chat about voltron or laugh at memes and whatnot ✌️
> 
> :]


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I know you want your happy ending, Lance,” Allura said gently. She was looking between him and Keith, had maybe witnessed the long look they’d just shared, but her eyes seemed sad. Lance felt something inside him clench up, a knot that been loosening retying itself, tightening tenfold. He felt his face drop, his smile vanish, as something cold and painful slithered in his gut, something that felt like fear and disappointment, something that seemed to clog his throat. “But this isn’t a fairytale.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me: alright the chapter's done lets post it  
> also me: how about first i write a smut scene to post at the exact same time as this chapter in a follow up oneshot  
> me: alright cool nice not like i wanted to go to sleep before 1am anyway
> 
> [anyway pls go read that after this if you're into smut]

It took a few seconds for everything to catch up in Lance’s head. It was like his brain had been put on pause for a moment, and now everything was happening in fast-forward, words and moments rushing through his head.

“How _dare_  you _trespass_  in our home!” Allura roared, the force of her finger jabbing into Keith’s chest probably enough to bruise, knowing her. The guards that normally would’ve been around Allura must’ve been sent elsewhere upon Keith and Hunk’s arrival.

“I didn’t _trespass_  — I’m just — Argh! If you would only listen to me —”

“I don’t listen to lying, trespassing, _humans_  —“

“— if you would both just calm down, I’m sure we can come to a —" Neither Keith nor Allura were interesting in Hunk’s attempts at placating them, so he went largely ignored. This all registered in Lance’s head in a split second, quickly followed by Shiro’s enraptured face.

Lance turned to Shiro, realizing it’d be easier to get answers out of him rather than the three screaming stooges over there. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was aware that everything was kind of going awry, that he’d better grab Keith and escape before things got any more complicated, but it didn’t really register enough for him to do anything about it. He just looked at Shiro.

“What?” he said, remembering what Shiro had whispered. _It’s her._  There was only one “her” in the room, and how could Shiro possibly know who she was? Unless he just meant, _it’s the princess,_  in which case, yeah, sure, but he needed to stop looking so shell-shocked and start helping with this stupid plan that was his idea in the first place. If it’d been up to Lance he’d be far away from the colony by now.

“It’s her,” Shiro repeated, voice still full of wonderment. “It’s — she’s the one, the mermaid, who... She _saved_  me...”

Lance squinted at Shiro, then Allura, and suddenly remembered his second meeting with Keith, that day on his boat. _When he woke up, he didn’t want to talk about Dad’s boat capsizing or the shark that got him. He just kept going on about the girl that’d saved him. A mermaid._

But… how? How could Allura have possibly saved Shiro’s life? To have done that, she would’ve had to have broken the law. The very law she so abided by, the one that was currently the bane of Lance’s existence, the root to all his troubles.

Anger rushed through Lance. What was Allura’s _problem_? She was such a hypocrite! Telling him he shouldn’t have saved a human when she’d done the _very same thing_.

Lance grabbed Shiro’s arm and yanked him forward in a rage. Shiro made a sound of surprise but didn’t struggle as Lance pulled him forward, harshly presenting him to Allura.

“You’re such a hypocrite!” he roared, still holding tight onto Shiro’s arm. His voice joining the throng was enough to shut everyone up momentarily, and Lance barely comprehended Keith’s surprise at seeing him, Allura’s offense at being yelled at.

“I beg your pardon?” she said lowly, sounding dangerous.

“You’re a hypocrite,” Lance repeated. He wished they were closer to the surface. Wished it was thunder-storming. That would fit the bill of his emotions pretty perfectly. As it was, he was at the bottom of the sea and the waters were calm and the castle was perfectly pristine. So Lance just rose up higher in the water, looking down at Allura, which was a pretty clear sign of disrespect.

“What are you talking about?” Allura demanded, and Lance gestured furiously at Shiro.

“Get a good look,” he spat. Allura did, eyes flickering over his appearance, but she looked back at Lance without any recognition in her eyes. “Don’t recognize him?” Lance scoffed. “Imagine him drowning. And without an arm. With blood everywhere and a shark circling as _you saved his life_.”

That did the trick. Allura’s eyes snapped back to Shiro, her mouth dropping into a perfect little ‘o’ as she looked him over, cataloguing all the similarities and differences of this man and the man she’d saved so many years before.

“But…” she started, probably numb with disbelief. “How…?”

Shiro was still too shocked to say anything for himself, gazing at Allura like she was the only star in the sky, and Allura seemed similarly overwhelmed, obviously never expecting for her transgression to come back in her face quite like this.

“The only difference between you and me,” Lance said lowly, finally letting go of Shiro so that he could cross his arms, “is that I made sure Keith was okay after I saved him.”

“I couldn’t very well walk up that beach and take him to a medic,” Allura snapped, defensive.

“And I suppose you weren’t even curious as to whether he survived? Whether he was okay?”

“Of course I did!” Allura was heated, her teeth bared as she yelled at Lance. Despite her rather threatening appearance, Shiro was still enraptured. “But I couldn’t… I couldn’t look for him,” she said, quieter now, her thoughts maybe somewhere in the past. “I couldn’t break the law like that, Lance. I’m the princess.” Her eyes drifted away from Lance, to Shiro, and they drained of anger.

“Just because you never got your happy ending doesn’t mean you have to take away mine,” Lance said. Finally, he let his eyes find Keith. He’d missed him so much — a disproportionate amount for the few days they’d been apart, but they’d been days filled with uncertainty and fear. He hadn’t been sure when, if ever, he’d see Keith again, but now he was here, in the flesh, _in his home_.

Keith was looking at him as well. His smile was soft, his eyes tracing over Lance, and they finally reached his own eyes and they locked gazes, smiling at each other and sharing a million feelings they hadn’t been able to express over the last few days. Fear. Anxiety. Anger, sorrow, pain. Relief. Happiness.

“I know you want your happy ending, Lance,” Allura said gently. She was looking between him and Keith, had maybe witnessed the long look they’d just shared, but her eyes seemed sad. Lance felt something inside him clench up, a knot that been loosening retying itself, tightening tenfold. He felt his face drop, his smile vanish, as something cold and painful slithered in his gut, something that felt like fear and disappointment, something that seemed to clog his throat. “But this isn’t a fairytale.”

“Allura…”

“I can’t just… _let you_  break the law,” she said. She sounded more understanding, more on-his-side than ever. He’d been directing so much of his anger and hatred at her lately, had had millions of arguments with her in his mind, and never did it turn out like this, where it looked like she wanted to concede but still didn’t.

“Then change it!” Lance begged. Unconsciously, he’d drifted closer to Keith, and before he knew it he was gripping onto his elbow, afraid if he let go Keith would disappear, gone forever.

Allura’s smile was sad. Lance knew that smile didn’t contain good news, didn’t contain anything that might make him feel happier, and he clung to Keith desperately. “You know I can’t,” she said carefully. “The law isn’t in place for people like you and Keith, with nothing but good intentions. It’s there to protect us from the rest of his people, the ones who would kidnap a sentient being for profit.”

Lance held tighter onto Keith. He was pretty sure he was shaking. Keith’s hand had come up to rest on Lance’s.

He wanted to protest. He wanted to scream and yell and argue, but finally he could see that that wouldn’t get him anywhere. That Allura’s mind was made up — and though Lance didn’t want to admit it — for good reason.

“However,” Allura said, and she continued speaking before Lance could even manage to drag his hopes up from where they’d been crushed beneath him. “I will grant you today. Keith is already here, after all, and I never did let you two say a proper goodbye. You will spend the day together, and at the end of it, you will say your farewells and fail to meet each other again. Understood?”

It wasn’t understood. Lance couldn’t just say goodbye to Keith, not when he felt like this for the first time ever, not when this was the strongest he’d ever felt about anything. But he nodded. He had to. He needed this day with Keith, needed as much time as he could get, and if this was the way to do that…

“We understand.” It was Keith who said it, voice firm and chin raised. It was probably good that he’d been the one to speak, because Lance was sure if it’d been him his voice would’ve wobbled.

“And you,” Allura said, gesturing to Shiro, whose eyes widened in surprise at being addressed. “I would be honored if you would spend the rest of your day with me. That is, if your captain would allow it…?”

“He wouldn’t mind at all,” Shiro managed to say. With that, Allura was nodding and swimming closer to Shiro, the rest of them clearly dismissed.

Swimming out of the palace with Keith (and Hunk) at his side felt surreal. He never thought he’d be in a position like this, Keith in his home and not being chased out by a rampaging Allura.

The excitement of having Keith in the reef and unharmed was dulled, however, by their impending doom. The doom, of course, being the farewells they would have to exchange at the end of the day.

Hunk seemed to understand the gravity of the situation and he waved goodbye with a sad smile to the two of them. Abruptly, Lance turned to Keith.

“Let’s just pretend,” he said desperately.

“What?”  
“Let’s pretend this isn’t the last time,” he begged. “I’ll show you around my home and we can pretend that tomorrow I’ll be back in the cavern and you’ll read _Harry Potter_  to me.”

Keith, apparently liking the idea of repressing his emotions as much as Lance did, nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. Yeah.”

And so they spent the day together. They tried to ignore the crushing weight located somewhere within them, reminding them of what was to come, of what today was.

Lance showed Keith has favorite parts around the reef. He showed him the towers of coral he and his siblings used to play hide and seek in, showed him the seaweed that climbed to the surface, tall and fluttering in the current of the ocean. He showed him the flat areas of soft sand where he’d used to sunbathe, before he’d learned how much stronger the sun was on the surface. He showed him the shelf, how the ocean grew dark and dangerous-looking off the edge of it.

And then, when he came across on of his niece and nephews chasing a school of fish, he introduced them to Keith.

“Lance!” Miguel cheered, spotting him past the fish he’d been chasing, and then the fish were abandoned and he and his sister were racing towards Lance instead.

“Hey, you two!” Lance laughed, catching Miguel and his sister, Mia, against his sides and letting out an, “Oof!” as the force of their collision sent him floating backwards.

Immediately, they were talking his ear off, swimming circles around him as they told him about their day and the humans they’d seen and the fish they’d caught. They didn’t seem to notice Keith, loitering a bit behind Lance, so he finally directed their attention his way.

“Guys, guys,” Lance said, waiting for them to calm down. “Meet my boyfriend, Keith.” He swam out of the kids’ reach and wrapped up around Keith’s side, grinning at Keith’s red face. He clearly hadn’t expected to be introduced this way, and Mia and Miguel were a whole new brand of excitement in the face of Uncle Lance’s Boyfriend. It didn’t seem to matter to them that his boyfriend was one of the government humans, but then again, Lance had already corrupted them in many other ways. Nowadays they were always whispering about humans and the surface and what was past the shelf. Lance could totally see a future of trouble-making for those two. Oops.

“HEY!” Miguel said loudly, having swum up to Keith’s face, which he was now peering into intently. “I know you!”

Keith started spluttering, and Lance was in a similar state of confusion. How could Miguel possibly know Keith?

“Uncle Lance! I know him! He said you’re famous and he wanted to meet you and — _now he’s your boyfriend!?"_

Lance couldn’t help it. He grinned, looking over at Keith who was glowering back at him. “I had to think of some kind of excuse,” he muttered, and Lance just cooed, pressing his face further into Keith’s space.

“You called me faaaamous,” he crooned, and Keith shoved at his side. The moment he was pushed away, however, Keith pulled him right back in, clearly not a fan of being apart either.

“But how are you gonna see him again when all the divers leave?” Mia suddenly butt in. She was tugging on Lance’s hand, insistent for an answer, worried that her uncle was going to lose his boyfriend.

Keith stiffened, and Lance’s expression fell. “I don’t know,” Lance said quietly. “The princess wants us to say goodbye.”

Both Mia and Miguel threw a fit. Mia cried, “But that’s not romantic _at all_!” Damn, Lance had taught her well.

“Are you gonna have to wait until next Observation Day to see each other?” Miguel whined, and Lance exchanged a look with Keith. It wasn’t ideal, and he definitely wanted to see him more often than that, but...

He could see it on Keith’s face. Knew he was thinking along the same lines. At least, if nothing else, they could see each other once a year, as long as Keith actually joined these government humans and was allowed to return.

It wouldn’t be nearly enough. It was be agonizing and painful, but it would be better than never seeing him at all, right?

“Maybe,” Lance said quietly. Miguel looked heartbroken.

“But that’s not _fair_ ,” he pouted. Lance tried to smile at him, but it felt weak even to himself.

“Sometimes, that’s just life,” Lance sighed. It didn’t feel like him. He was used to fighting for what he wanted, used to pursuing his dreams, and now he was giving up. Giving in.

He ended up leading Keith away from his niece and nephew after that, brutally reminded of their time limit and trying desperately to ignore it. He took Keith on a swim, one he’d always wanted to go on with him, one where he didn’t have to worry about him needing to breathe.

This time, though, Lance didn’t swim fast. He didn’t swim erratically, with sharp turns and drives. He took it slow, holding Keith against him and propelling them gently through the water. They didn’t talk, just let their bodies and hands and heartbeats speak for them.

Time passed too fast. It slipped through Lance’s fingers, uncaring that he wanted it to go slow, uncaring that he was trying to grip it for all he was worth. The day was coming to an end and the humans were leaving, all heading towards the submarine, loading into the machine to disappear for yet another year.

Lance was holding Keith like he’d never let go. Keith was gripping him just as tight, to be fair, but Lance was pretty sure the moment Keith let go of him he’d fall apart, no longer held together.

Shiro and Allura were nearby. From what Lance had seen of them, he could assume they’d enjoyed their day, enjoyed each other’s company. They were watching on, obviously waiting for Lance and Keith to part, but Lance just couldn’t make himself let go.

“I don’t want this to be goodbye,” Lance whispered, fingers pressing harder into the material of Keith’s scuba gear.

“Maybe it doesn’t have to be,” Keith whispered fervently. “Maybe I can buy some scuba-gear of my own. Or we could meet in the cavern in the night. Or —”

“I want to,” Lance said. He felt desperate. But he also felt scared. He was pretty sure after today, after all that’d gone down, Allura would lift his sentence, would let him venture to and from the reef as he pleased. But if she caught him ignoring her, ignoring the law a _second_  time... There was no telling what she’d do.

Before either of them could continue, Allura shouted something, indecipherable in her panic. And for the second time that day, Lance looked up to see a shark swimming towards him.

Maybe it was his fault. He hadn’t thought to warn Allura about the shark he’d spotted earlier — surely the same shark that was here now — and so no precautions had been taking. He’d been too distracted by everything else: the diver he’d saved being Shiro; seeing Allura arguing with Keith; Keith _being_  here, in his home; and their goodbye towering so dauntingly on the horizon.

So no one had known about the shark, not unless Shiro had decided to say something to Allura. The submarine was suspended above the shelf — the safest place for it to descend for the divers. Keith and Lance were right near the edge, Allura and Shiro further back, and the rest of the humans having already piled onto the submarine.

All in all, everything should’ve been fine. Everything besides Lance and Keith’s relationship, anyway. Another successful Observation Day and all that.

But it wasn’t. The shark was back, and this time it was angrier. Smarter. It’d been bested by Lance once before, and its anger showed in the harsh movements of its body, tail swiping furiously through the water.

Despite the shark being smart, Lance was smarter. He wouldn’t let anyone get hurt. He grabbed Keith, adrenaline racing through his veins, and turned them around, pushing Keith further from the shark and preparing to swim away—

Except the shark had been expecting that, apparently. It was fast, and close, and it arched towards Keith as it gnashed its teeth, but Lance had already pulled him out of the way. He was safe, he was—

 _Drowning_.

The shark’s teeth had pierced Keith’s oxygen tank. Lance had thought he was fine, thought the absence of blood meant he was safe, but now water was rushing into his lungs instead of air, and Keith was thrashing in the water. Shiro was yelling something off to the side and a legion of guards had poured in. Lance didn’t pay any attention to the shark being corralled away, guards threatening it with spears. He couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the convulsing of Keith’s body.

Panic erupted inside of Lance. He couldn’t think of what to do, couldn’t think of how to fix this, and desperately he found himself wrenching Keith’s helmet off, as if that would somehow fix anything. The oxygen tank breaking had flooded his helmet with water, sure, but outside the helmet was _just more water_.

Thoughts seemed to flick through Lance’s mind in a sporadic reel, none of them concrete, none of them lasting. _Surface. Too far. Keith. Drowning. No air. Too far. No gills. No air. Drowning. Keith. Keith. Keith._

“Allura!” Lance found himself shouting. It was stupid. It was a childish hope. But it was all Lance had.

There’d always been talk of there being magic in Allura’s bloodline. It was as much a fairytale as all the stories Lance loved. But that didn’t stop mothers with sick babies from visiting Allura, asking for her blessing. Didn’t stop Allura from joining the first hunt every year to ensure they had bountiful hunts year-long. It didn’t stop Lance from begging for Allura, clinging to Keith as he stopped convulsing, as he grew still, his eyes lolling in his head.

“Please,” he said, holding Keith closer, tighter. “Allura, _please_.”

Allura was beside him. He hadn’t noticed when she’d gotten there. She looked just as panicked as Lance, just as afraid and devastated. “Lance — I can’t, I don’t know —”

“ _Please_ ,” Lance sobbed. “Give him gills, make him breathe, _something_!”

It wasn’t in Allura’s ability. Or, it shouldn’t have been. No one really understood the magic in her bloodline, no one knew if it was actually real. But as Allura closed her eyes and pressed her hands against either side of Keith’s throat, as the marks on her cheeks and the water around her hands glowed, Lance knew. Her magic wasn’t a fairytale, and neither was his life. Because the fairytales always ended with a twist. They taught lessons instead of happiness.

In the fairytales, the human never got to be with the mermaid. Never grew a set of gills. But this wasn’t a fairytale.

Keith jolted in the water, coughing hard as bubbles flew from his gills.

—

“Ow, Pidge, that _hurts_ ,” Keith grunted, trying to shove his friend away. It wasn’t working. She was disproportionately strong for the size of her body, and she acted like Keith wasn’t shoving at her at all as she continued to try to dig her fingers into his throat.

He and Shiro had only just returned to the surface. Though it’d been almost an hour since he’d kind-of-drowned, they’d spent a long time on the sub with the rest of the crew, all of whom were now sworn to secrecy.

After saving his life, Allura had promptly ushered him and Shiro out of her waters. Keith had barely managed to link his fingers with Lance’s, to share a wide-eyed look with him as he breathed as easily as he did on land, before he was shoved into the submarine’s loading dock. He’d barely been able to comprehend what was happening, only aware that one moment everything had hurt, had _ached_ , and the next he’d somehow been breathing. It’d been confusing and overwhelming and it’d taken him a few minutes to even realize he’d acquired gills.

What’d really cemented the fact that he now had gills was when he’d been loaded into the submarine and, for a moment, couldn’t remember how to breathe. He’d choked, and then his gills had pressed flat against his neck and he’d sucked in a huge breath of air, hand flying up to touch the gills in realization. They felt like skin, mostly, but softer, and when he rubbed them in the opposite direction they opened up.

The ride back to the docks had had Keith sitting there in a daze as Shiro explained what’d just happened to the captain. Eventually, Keith had managed to change out of his scuba-gear and back into the clothes he’d arrived in — sweatpants and a t-shirt — and from there he’d felt a lot more calm, a lot more normal.

Once they’d docked, Shiro and the rest of the crew were forced to go back to the base to talk about the events of Observation Day and, more importantly, what would happen to them if they shared the information of Keith’s newly-gilled appearance. Keith, on the other hand, went to Pidge’s house. It was more out of instinct than anything else — it was where he went whenever anything somewhat dramatic happened to him. Granted, this had used to apply to a guy asking for Keith’s number or Keith finding what he was sure was a meteorite or a new movie they were interested in coming out, but magically growing a pair of gills seemed to fit the bill too.

Plus, he hadn’t really been interested in going home to his house alone after all that had happened. He’d spent the whole day stressed and anxious, worried about losing Lance, only to end it by nearly dying. It was safe to say Keith was feeling strung out. And so he’d snuck through Pidge’s window, not wanting to bother her parents, and scared the shit out of her in the process.

“Keith! Jesus fuck!” she’d cursed, almost falling out of her desk chair.

Keith had paid her no mind. “Gills!” he’d said instead, pointing desperately to his neck. And that led directly to where they were now, Keith currently pinned to the floor, trying to bat Pidge’s incessant hands away while she kneeled on his chest and attacked him.

“And they just _showed up_?” Pidge said incredulously. Keith, finally realizing this was a losing battle, stopped defending himself. Pidge accepted this with delight, leaning in closer to get a good look at his newly acquired gills. She ran a finger over them gently, and Keith couldn’t help it — they fluttered reflexively against his neck.

“I think Allura did something,” Keith answered, trying to cast his mind back to the blurry moment in his memory. It was all foggy; everything had felt distant and dull in the face of death.

Across the room, Pidge’s computer gave a single warning beep before a screen was projecting itself, and on that screen—

“Lance!” Keith and Pidge said in unison, and Lance’s face split into a grin.

“Hey!” Lance greeted, face close to the screen and eyes bright with excitement. He cast a hasty glance around himself, almost as an afterthought, before smiling at them again. “It’s good that you guys are already together — now I don’t have to ask Pidge to go get you.”

“I want to know what happened _in detail_ ,” Pidge demanded. Lance didn’t seem to question the fact that she had wrestled Keith to the ground, nor that she was still sitting on him now.

“Allura magically gave Keith gills, no big deal,” Lance shrugged, but his expression gave away his excitement.

“Are they permanent?” Pidge asked.

“Oh, definitely,” Lance said confidently. “Allura doesn’t have enough magic to take those babies away. I didn’t even think she had enough to make them in the first place,” he said reverently.

“So...” Keith said slowly. He finally shoved Pidge off him, though it only worked because he caught her by surprise. “What does this mean?” And then, lowering his voice as if he could keep Pidge from hearing him, “For us?”

Lance didn’t seem to have the same reservations about talking about their relationship in front of Pidge, who was listening to every word greedily. “Well,” he said, “I’m not supposed to have contact with humans.”

Keith felt his insides deflate. “Right,” he said quietly.

“Right!” said Lance, sounding way less sad than Keith, which sucked. “And you’re not really human, anymore. Technically. I mean, you have _gills_.”

“I have gills,” Keith repeated, because it was so strange, still didn’t seem like something that applied to him.

“And there’s nothing against mermaids hanging out with non-humans. Aquatic creatures.”

“But I’m on land,” Keith pointed out.

“Semi-aquatic, then,” Lance said flippantly. “I’m not banned from hanging out with turtles, am I?”

“No...”

“And _you’re_  not human anymore. Oh, and Allura removed my reef-prison ban. Basically what I’m saying is: meet me in the cavern?”

“Can I come?” Pidge burst out before Keith could even agree (as if he wouldn’t).

“Of course!”

“Even though I’m human?” Pidge asked.

“It’s so hard to tell who’s human these days,” Lance said loftily. “Some of you have gills, some don’t — I couldn’t possibly tell you apart.”

And so it was decided. They promised to meet in the cavern in twenty minutes and Pidge went about packing a bag. It was just starting to get dark outside but Shiro probably wouldn’t be home for a couple hours. Still, Keith left a note on the counter just in case before rejoining Pidge.

They ended up getting to the cavern first. Pidge immediately tried to get him into the water to show off his new gills, but Keith refused, feeling nervous. He wasn’t even sure he remembered how to use them. He had a feeling he’d get in the water and immediately drown due to sheer idiocy.

Pidge was still arguing with him about it when Lance showed up, Hunk in tow. Lance burst out of the water dramatically, hoisting himself as high as he could on the ledge and smiling already.

“You’re here!” he cheered. And then, “Keith, get in the water!”

“Fine,” Keith said.

“Keith, you hoe,” Pidge scoffed, and Keith shrugged uncaringly.

Hunk seemed just as curious as Pidge was, and he watched eagerly as Keith, kind of self-consciously, peeled off his clothes until he was wearing only his boxers. He slid into the water, Lance immediately reaching out for him and pulling him closer. One of his hands gripped Keith’s, the other latching onto his hip.

“You wanna go underwater?” Lance said softly. His words, his smile, seemed to be just for Keith, despite their friends being right beside them.

Keith frowned uncertainly. “I don’t know how to use my gills,” he said. “I’ll choke on the water, or something.”

“You won’t,” Lance promised. “It’s instinct.” Keith didn’t stop frowning and Lance laughed, tugging him a bit further out into the pool. “Just try,” he insisted. “If it doesn’t work you can swim right back up.”

Finally, Keith reluctantly agreed, and he let Lance pull him under the water.

At first, Keith held his breath. _That_  was his instinct — to not open his mouth and suck in a lungful of water when something like that was supposed to kill him. He stared at Lance with wide eyes, hair billowing around his face under the water. Lance laughed.

“Are you holding your breath?” he asked. It still kind of shocked Keith how easily Lance’s words carried under the water, but he guessed that came with being a mermaid, with being able to talk without having to hold your breath at the same time.

Keith nodded in answer to Lance’s question, and Lance shook his head in affectionate exasperation. His fingers came up, rubbing lightly against Keith’s gills. Keith shivered.

“Just breathe,” Lance instructed. “These’ll do all the work — I promise.”

It was partly because of Lance’s words, and partly because he couldn’t really hold his breath any longer, that Keith finally gasped in a mouthful of water. He was expecting the burn of the water in his lungs, something he’d already experienced once today, and was surprised when nothing hurt at all. The water poured into his mouth, but it just as quickly escaped through his gills, only the oxygen left-over making it to his lungs.

His surprise must’ve shown on his face because Lance laughed, rushing towards him and sweeping him up into a hug. “This is insane!” he enthused, squeezing Keith tighter and giggling into his neck. Keith laughed too, unable to help it — _he could breathe!_

Hunk, thankfully, had given them the privacy of being underwater alone, but apparently their time for privacy had run out. He let out a loud _whoop!_  above them, and then his face was out of the water again, but Keith could hear him talking excitedly to Pidge.

“And now it’s time for Pidge to conduct scientific experiments on you,” Lance sighed into his neck. Keith groaned, but he’d known it was coming.

The next better part of an hour was spent with Pidge conducting several different tests on Keith, some of which involved her digging her fingers into his neck rather painfully. Hunk helped as well, examining Keith for the underwater parts of Pidge’s tests.

At one point, they were all sent into a fit of panic when they heard footsteps coming towards the cavern, and Lance, Hunk, and Keith had escaped to the bottom of the tide pool just in time to hide. But it’d turned out to just be Shiro, who’d been given permission to come home early only to find Keith’s note.

“I just wanted to check up on you,” he said, after explaining this to Pidge, who’d then gotten their attention and had them return to the surface. “Plus, I wanted to meet Lance under different conditions. I’d heard so much about him…”

Lance grinned an evil looking grin. “You talk about meee,” he sang, waggling his eyebrows at Keith, who glared at Shiro. Except… he couldn’t deny that he kind of liked having Shiro with him now. After everything, he still wasn’t angry, and he didn’t disapprove of their relationship.

“Plus, I brought snacks,” Shiro added, and so he was readily invited to stay. Keith hopped onto the ledge to sit beside him and Pidge, dripping wet and shivering, while Shiro pulled out peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Lance’s interest was immediately piqued, though luckily Shiro had had the foresight to prepare extra sandwiches anyway. Lance ended up taking his sandwich apart and licking up all the honey before actually eating his sandwich, something which Shiro watched with amusement and Keith with resignation. Lance was too curious about human food to eat it like a normal person.

“You know,” Shiro said, after a few minutes of everyone chowing down in silence, “I recognized you.” This was directed at Lance, who now had peanut butter all over his fingers and seemed to be having trouble with how sticky his mouth was.

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Shiro said, and then he laughed. “It’s kind of hard to forget the one mermaid that isn’t scared of us.” He then pulled out his phone, and he opened the photos app before scrolling through his videos, eventually coming to one that looked like it was from an underwater camera. He clicked on it and the video started on a group of fish, which then scattered after a blur of blue shot through them. The blur — a much younger Lance — came up victorious, holding a struggling fish in his hands and whooping loudly.

Just then, the camera raised a few feet higher, likely as Shiro emerged from whatever he’d been hiding behind. Lance caught sight of Shiro and his eyes widened. The fish escaped from his grasp in his surprise, and just like that, the spell was broken.

“Aw, _man_!” he said, looking forlornly after the fish, before remembering Shiro and looking somewhat above the camera again. He must’ve decided he was angry about his catch being scared away by the human before him as he glared and stuck out his tongue before swimming away. The camera followed after him, but soon Lance disappeared from view when another school of fish darted by, Lance racing after them.

“Wow!” Lance said. “That was _you_?”

Shiro laughed. “I thought I recognized you. I have more recent videos on my computer at work, but this was all I needed to see to be sure you were who I thought you were.”

“Ha ha, Keith,” Lance said suddenly, sounding more taunting than amused, and he pushed himself out of the water to get closer to Keith’s face. “I knew your brother before I knew you!”

It didn’t take long after they finished their dinners for Shiro to start drilling Keith as to whether he was actually okay or not. He was worried about his gills, wanted to know if he felt sick or woozy or dizzy or feverish. His testing was almost as vigorous as Pidge’s, but instead of testing Keith for scientific purposes it was for health ones, holding a hand to his forehead and making Keith say, “Aaahh.”

Somehow, Shiro fit nicely into their little group, and Keith was able to relax and appreciate that things seemed to be working out. He even agreed to spend the night when Lance suggested they all have a sleepover in the cavern, claiming he’d already told his family he was spending the night at Hunk’s.

After that it was only a matter of time before they were all drifting off to sleep, the combination of long days and, in some cases, near death experiences, enough to tucker everyone right out. Pidge fell asleep first, because while she liked to pretend she could stay away for all hours of the night, she was actually a huge lightweight when it came to her sleep. Shiro was soon to follow, and then came Hunk, and that left just Lance and Keith awake, Keith lounging on Lance’s chest as they floated around the tide pool, no longer having anyone to talk to.

“Come sleep with me?” Lance suggested in a whisper, and Keith didn’t even have to think about it before he was agreeing. The two of them drifted to the bottom of the pool, the transition to using his gills way less daunting this time. It was kind of strange to think that they’d never had a chance to spend a night together before, and now, finally, they were — and at the bottom of the pool, too.

They settled in a small distance from Hunk, Lance immediately and easily burying his tail in sand. He then tugged Keith tight against his body, holding him in place and keeping him from drifting away in the water. Keith wrapped a leg around Lance to secure them even more, and Lance hummed into his neck, pleased.

“This is nice,” Lance murmured, mouthing absent-mindedly against Keith’s neck as his fingers played against the bare skin of his back.

“You’re nice,” Keith said, in a half-asleep kind of delirious state that wasn’t apparent to him until Lance snorted into his ear, amused.

“All right,” he said, and nosed into his hair. They fell asleep like that, soft and close and weird-gill-breaths intermingling.

—

Lance woke slowly. He wasn’t used to having someone pressed against him as he came into consciousness, and it took him a few agonizing seconds of laying there in a state of confusion before he remembered where he was and who he was with.

As soon as he remembered, he hummed, pressing his face into Keith’s skin without opening his eyes. He pressed kissing into his neck, along his jaw, on his cheeks and lips, slowly coaxing him into wakefulness. Keith was slow to wake, obviously a heavy sleeper, and he groaned low in his throat as Lance continued to kiss him, moving back along his jaw, towards this one spot behind his ear…

“Mmm. Lance?” Keith said, voice low from sleep.

“Lance,” said another, decidedly-not-Keith voice. Lance shot up, 100% more awake than he’d been two seconds ago, and spotted Allura at the entrance of the cavern. _Again_.

In milliseconds, Lance was out from the sand he’d managed to bury himself under and wrapped around Keith, who made a quiet noise of confusion before he really seemed to realize what was going on. Lance was on the verge of commanding Keith, Shiro, and Pidge to carry him away in a not-so-fashionable escape, but he figured that could be plan B. First, Lance did what he did best: rambled.

“You can’t stop true love, Allura!” he began, holding onto Keith even tighter.

“Lance —”

“Also, technically, Keith isn’t even human anymore, he has gills. So I’m not breaking any laws. He’s semi-aquatic. And —”

“ _Lance_.”

“— let me just tell you, love _will_  find a way —”

Lance and Allura were talking over each other, and only then did Hunk wake up in a sudden spasm, taking inventory of the situation in a matter of seconds and flying to attention.

“RUN, LANCE — I’LL DISTRACT HER! PROTECT YOUR LOVE!”

“ _GUYS_.” It was Keith who spoke, so that’s pretty much the only reason Lance finally shut up.

“What is it, babe?”

From where he was wrapped around Keith, Lance could see the tips of Keith’s ears going red, which was maybe why it took him a second to process what he said. “Maybe actually listen to the princess?”

Finally, Lance looked up at Allura. She looked exasperated. But not angry.

“Thank you, Keith,” Allura said, and she rolled her eyes before finally concentrating on Lance. “I came up here after learning you were lying — _again_  — with the intent to reprimand you, but…” she shook her head slightly, eyes trained on the two of them, Lance still wrapped around Keith and their hands tangled together, though Lance wasn’t really sure when that had happened. “It’s clear how greatly you care for each other. I’d be a fool to take that kind of love away from you, especially knowing most of our kind only love one.”

Keith stiffened in surprise, and Allura gained an amused glint in her eye. “Don’t act so surprised,” she said. “You’re part mermaid now, too — I wouldn’t be surprised if Lance was your only love.”

“I —” Keith said, before clearing his throat roughly. “Yeah. Okay.”

Just then, because Lance’s life was never difficult enough, there was a distant sound of, “ _Cannonbaaaaaallll_!” before the water erupted with the presence of Pidge, doing what she deemed ‘a cannonball’ into the water. Allura’s eyes widened.

“She’s semi-aquatic too,” Lance said quickly. Allura fixed him with a ‘totally-over-his-bullshit’ stare.

Then a pair of legs abruptly dropped into the side of the pool, kicking happily in the water, and Allura’s eye twitched at the sight.

“He has semi-aquatic relations,” said Lance.

“You know what,” Allura said hastily, “we’re just gonna tell everyone Keith’s part-mermaid. And these —” she waved her hand vaguely in the direction of Pidge and Shiro “— are his family, so communication with them is allowed.”

“Ooh! Maybe communication with all humans could be on a case by case basis —” Lance began, but Allura groaned, pressing a hand to her forehead.

“One major change at a time, please,” she said, before nodding at him, Keith, and Hunk respectively. “I’m headed back to the reef now. Feel free to visit anytime, Keith.”

“Thank you,” Keith said hastily, and then Allura was gone, and Lance was finally unwinding from the protective wrap he’d accidentally subjected Keith to.

“Wow,” he said. “That couldn’t have gone more perfectly.”

“And all it took was Allura seeing us cuddling,” Keith pointed out.

“Imagine if we’d just made out in front of her forever ago,” Lance lamented. “Then we never would’ve had to go through all this trouble.”

Keith snorted and Hunk outright laughed, right before he breached the surface, gesturing grandly above the water and likely already recounting the events that’d just occurred, unawares to Pidge and Shiro.

Instead of joining them, Lance pulled Keith back to the sandy floor, wanting to hold him in his arms for just another few minutes. It seemed that, finally, he was getting the fairytale ending he’d wanted all along.

_“CAAAANNNOOOOOONNBAAALLLLL!"_

Then again, maybe not. Still, Lance couldn’t help but think it was a good one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me on [my tumblr](http://jilliancares.tumblr.com/) !! we can talk about this fic or my upcoming fics or voltron or memes and i'll be happy alright pls have a good day/night gbye


End file.
